Michael Lin, Untitled, 2020, acrylic on canvas, 75 x 150 cm each (triptych)
Michael Lin: Painting as a bounded, physical space
Michael Lin is an artist living and working in Taipei and Brussels. Lin turns away from painting as an object of contemplation toward one of painting as a bounded, physical space, one we can settle into and inhabit.
Michael Lin, Mariposa B1-09, installation view, Museo Jumex, 2020. Photo: Abigall Enzaldo
Michael Lin & Atelier Bow-Wow, Untitled Gathering (Tokyo 2020), installation view, @KITTE building, Japan
Lin orchestrates monumental painting installations that re-conceptualize and reconfigure public spaces. Using patterns and designs appropriated from textiles his works have been exhibited in major institutions and international Biennials around the world, including The Museum of Contemporary Art, Toronto (2020); Jumex Museum, Mexico City (2020); Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taipei (2019); National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne (2017); Museum of Contemporary Art and Design, Manila (2016).
Michael Lin, Untitled, 2017, emulsion on wood, installation view, Chiostro del Bramante, Italy
Michael Lin, Archipelage, installation view, MOCA Toronto, 2020 Photo: Tom Arban Inc
A large-scale commissioned work by Lin will open to the public this August, 2022 at a major institution in New York City. BANK will present his latest works in Shanghai in doublespeak a double-solo exhibition opening April 2022.
Michael Lin, Untitled, 2020, emulsion on canvas, 22 x 244 cm each
“He turns the ordinary into the extraordinary, the quotidian into a new spectacle, one that is not fixed, but rather open to alternative models of living and interaction.”
- Hou Hanru
Transforming the institutional architecture of the public museum, his unconventional paintings invite visitors to reconsider their usual perception of those spaces, and to become an integral part of the work, giving meaning to its potential as an area for interaction, encounter, and re-creation.
Michael Lin, Smashed, vinyl on glass, variable dimensions, installation view, Aurora Museum, The Making of a Museum
Michael Lin, Untitled, 2021, emulsion on canvas, 200 x 100 cm
Lin’s practice conflates painting with architecture often through his signature cultural semiotics and floral pattern motifs. In his latest presentation the legacy of global surf culture and Polynesian tropics are examined in the form of Hawaiian shirt patterns which have been meticulously hand painted onto wooden panels.
Michael Lin, His Royal Highness, 2022, emulsion on canvas, 45.5 x 33 x 3 cm
The painterly fray that the artist emphasizes is the fair line between patterns which help to marry the panels to each other. Lin’s interest is in complicating an already complex mixture of cultures, whereby this quintessential Hawaiian garment, popularized worldwide, is actually derived from Japanese prints.
Vivian Rehberg says of Lin’s works of the past decade "transgress the lines between popular and high culture, between craft and art, and between the undervalued domestic realm and the powerful public one. He is an artist who uses paint to create spaces we interact with and which allow us to interact with each other. We enter, step on, look down on, look up at, eat or talk in, or even—as they become familiar—overlook them. The common themes of sociability, socialization, interaction, cultural symbols, and collective life are present throughout his practice."