Lot 933: MICHAEL LIN

MICHAEL LIN B. 1964 COOL AND SWEET Executed in 2008 acrylic on canvas, bicycle, pinwheels, coffee cans electric fan 200 by 200 cm.; 78 3/4 by 78 3/4 in.

Taipei, IT Park Gallery, The Two-Person Exhibition by Michael Lin and Heidi Voet, 2008

Artist Magazine, No. 401, Taiwan, 2008, p. 499
Chinese Contemporary Art News, No. 45, Taiwan, 2008, p. 123
Michael Lin, Hatje Cantz, Germany, 2010, pp. 146-147

This work is accompanied by a certificate of authenticity issued by the gallery

Michael Lin has painted and decked numerous exteriors and interiors of architecture all over the world, taking the imagery of traditional Taiwanese textiles to every imaginable corner of the globe. He has swathed meters upon meters of madly colourful and heavily enlarged floral patterns onto walls, floors, furniture, so as to transform otherwise sterile spaces and construct productive ambiences. Though stationary and flat, his extensive paintings invade the space before them, above them, surrounding them, in an earnest effort to establish a dialogue between the work and its audience. Extending his creative legacy in a delightfully unexpected way, Cool and Sweet (Lot 933) is slightly less ambitious in scale yet much more aggressive in its interactive potential. The installation comprises of a vintage bicycle affixed with a pole flaunting a cluster of merchandise, the apparatus then anchored by a diptych propped up by four little containers. Refined into a semi-abstract rendition and distilled into a chromatic dichotomy of pink and silver, Michael Lin's celebrated flowers form a commanding background, the motif echoed below on the espresso cans specially commissioned by the Italian coffee maker illy. The bicycle, purchased by the artist himself in Shanghai, parks itself before the painting while a suggestion of the presence of a street vendor is being distracted by the pleasant zephyrs sent over by the turning pinwheels, brightly coloured and visually pleasing in their own right. The monumentality of the augmented florals permeates the exhibition room just as the revolving toys affect through their ability to move the air. Meaning and memory are generated as one saunters in to view the work—Michael Lin invites his audience to experience the coolness and sweetness of a leisurely afternoon once upon a time in his childhood.