“A Garden Through the Mirror” is an elegant exhibit presented by the artists Daniel Arroyo and Marcel Reyes-Cortez at the Chens Art gallery in Taipei. The exhibit, which opened Saturday, May 20, includes more than 40 images and interpretations of flowers, both real and fictive, and invites the viewer to explore the theme through their own imagination.
The artists use different creative mediums to give expression to their ideas and feelings. Arroyo paints in oil on canvas with uneven and layered brushstrokes, while Reyes-Cortez produces underglaze ceramics with floral decoration on an even surface. Beyond these stylistic differences, however, both artists use bright colors that suggest summertime, and draw inspiration for their work from Taiwan as well as Europe and Latin America.
Arroyo is a skilled and experienced oil painter from Spain, who originally studied in Paris at the School of Fine Arts. Though his aesthetic is rooted in realism, his work is also abstract. The combination of these two genres produces nuanced and engaging arrangements that include still life and landscape.
Chilean-born Reyes-Cortez first trained as a photographer and graduated from Goldsmiths, University of London, with a PhD in visual anthropology before working with ceramics. His pieces include a mix of traditional and innovative large tile panels and vase sculptures painted with intertwining flowers.
Chens Art, which was established in 2017, is dedicated to contemporary art and promotes national and international artists in Taiwan and overseas. The gallery has hosted exhibitions by Taiwanese and Chinese artists such as Chou Chen and Ann Niu as well as European and Latin American artists such as Alejandro Teves and Hetty van der Linden. “A Garden Through the Mirror” will run until June 24, 2023.