Oil over tempera on linen

38 x 45.7 cm.15 x 18 in.

Signed 'Ziqi' in Chinese and dated on the lower right
Yeh Tzuchi
(b.1957-)
Since his study in art department of university, Yeh Tzuchi has been committed to the creation of realistic paintings. In early 1980s he went to the United States and used realistically painted “Bathroom Series” to convey his intense homesickness. Since then, Yeh Tzuchi often uses still lifes and landscapes as theme, and commits ups and downs and injuries and deaths of lives by way of portraying small things. In 1989 he started his “Monologue” series, afterward he gradually added “dialogues”, showing that his state of mind had turned from loneliness into perfection and accommodation of interacting with surroundings. After living in New York for 19 years, Yeh Tzuchi returned to his homeland Hualien, Taiwan, and fully devoted himself to another pure creative process.

For Yeh Tzuchi, painting has always been diary of living and records of life. Whether it is a still life, a landscape, or a character, his realistic and metaphorical skills have a easy-to-transform style, are filled with a rich and peculiar personal feelings, and a mysterious yet objectively existed spiritual symbol, he mixes egg tempera and oil painting techniques to make picture color bright, texture delicate, and full of classic charm and flavor.

When Yeh Tzuchi is moved by a theme object image, he often takes a long time to deliberate, places the object in a most appropriate space, and precisely calculates every square inch of viewpoint height of theme object image and distance of space edge,
expecting to release the spiritual forces of the theme object image and his inner mind, and extracting and refining the object image to a metaphysical realm with portrait painting spirit. “Dialogue‧Bell Fruit II” was started in 2003, really completed in 2013, lasting for almost 10 years, it seemingly contains the whole transition of mind of Yeh Tzuchi from returning to Taiwan till now, the bell fruits not only evoke his memories of eastern Taiwan, and even contain the recall of his past events. The artist carefully depicts the details of the bottom of the bell fruit pair on wooden desktop, all the thin and shiny rind of bell fruit surface, the fruit pulp full of water, and the texture of undulating grains and pastel green color are presented in his skillful skills and the warm colors of egg tempera. In this work, with a special viewing angle, and with the backdrops of dramatic light and deeply secluded and quiet background, Yeh Tzuchi makes the pair of pink circular structures like nestled friends, while the special and flower-like petals in bottom of bell fruits looks like closed lips full of emotions and contains meticulous and touching feelings. This work is agglomerated in a spatial composition full of modern sense, simple and minimalist but can visually feel a peaceful and solemn power, in terms of spiritual connotation it even more completely reflects the artist’s creative idea: “The most attractive point of this creation is, it reveals that only two separate persons can sincerely talk. And only up to this point, a lonely horizon can return and obtain a kind of perfection.” So the still-lifes under the artist’s brush have surpassed the superficial look of the object image itself but directly state the inner reflection and spiritual meaning of the painter himself.

Price estimate:
HKD：100,000 - 150,000
USD：12,900 - 19,400

Auction Result:
HKD: 115,000