Artist Statement - Robert Huang (English Version)

I was born in 1959 in the rural Ruisui Township of Hualien, Taiwan. In my eyes, the town possessed a beauty and charm that far surpassed all the other cities I've lived in. During the summer nights of my childhood, my grandparents often asked me to set up small wicker chairs outside the house. They would have tea with our neighbors under the moonlight, while the children gathered on plastic mats to play. My introverted young self would often lie before the velvet night sky alone and gaze at the stars through the night, venturing into the dark expense of indigo sprinkled with dazzling white-gold. The stars filled me with warmth and cast away my loneliness, and eventually became the first symbols of love and beauty in my life.

In 1979, I was admitted to Tunghai University. One summer afternoon, I chanced upon The Little Prince in the university library. The cover illustration depicted a little prince and a rose standing on the edge of a planet. Just from a glance, I sensed the loneliest sorrow that must have filled the heart of the author, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. As I was living a solitary life then, studying far from home, I felt a profound resonance with that very loneliness felt by the Little Prince. The Little Prince taught me that the world was, in fact, a realm of excitement and sensibility, where each person has his or her own profound spiritual well to reflect in and a star to dream upon, and the Little Prince's devoted innocence and adoration to the rose inspired me to search for my own unique “rose”—the Life of Love. Within the Tunghai university campus was the Luce Memorial Chapel (designed by I. M. Pei), which profoundly inspired my interest in the field of architecture. Although initially majoring in business, I began taking design and sketching classes in the university’s architecture department. I must say that The Little Prince and architecture initiated my artistic journey, as it was then that I vowed to make the pursuit of art my lifelong goal. 

After graduating from Tunghai University, I teamed up with three alumni from the Architecture Department to spearhead a neighborhood revitalization project in Taichung—"Utopia." We renovated an abandoned construction site and turned a deserted waste-ridden street into Taiwan's first Art Street. Within the years 1985 to 1990, "Utopia" shined as Taiwan's first successful integrated community development project. However, in pursuit for my own rose of devotion depicted by Saint-Exupéry in The Little Prince, I retreated from the architecture industry in 1990 and established a rose-themed English tea house—Rose House Cafe. Today, the Rose House brand operates over 50 shops in major cities worldwide. Furthermore, I’ve always loved classical music for its passionate portrayal of our world of beauty, as I am particularly fond of works by Johann Sebastian Bach, Frédéric François Chopin, and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Their music offers me insights into the perspectives and expectations that these artists held of our world, and inspires my inquiries and contemplations on life, death, loss, spirituality, love, and nature. As I've long served as the head of the Taichung Classical Orchestra, through which I’ve trained many Taiwanese children into outstanding musicians. Bit by bit, these life experiences all became integral sources of inspiration for my art.

During my early artistic period between 1990 and 2008, which I view as my “Rose Period,” I themed most of my early works around roses, while emulating the works of old masters such as Paul Cézanne, Henri Matisse, Willem de Kooning, Umehara Ryuzaburo, and Liao Chi-Chun. As I practiced techniques and methods of expression with properties of coloration, I was particularly drawn to Matisse's use of color, which projected a primal and simplistic naivety, and this influenced me greatly. During this period, I was inclined toward depictions in highly saturated colors, compositions of striking rhythms and decorations, and sentiments of vitality and aestheticism, imbuing my canvas with expressionist and Fauvist qualities. The subjects of my work during my later “Rose Period” were actually quite varied, including flowers, people, cities, mountains, and skies and oceans, and I also created a series of sculptures and prints. From 2002 to 2009, I also painted porcelainware designs for two major British chinaware manufacturers affiliated with the British Royal Family, as my works were used on afternoon tea wares, dessert plates, and vases, including Prince William's royal wedding porcelainwares and the 60th anniversary commemorative tankard for the Diamond Jubilee of Elizabeth II’s coronation. My porcelain works seemed to have achieved a steady popularity, drawing collectors from all over the world.   

Aspiring to attain a more comprehensive understanding of art and to reflect my artistic process from an academic point of view, I enrolled in the master's program at Tsinghua University Department of Philosophy to study Aesthetics in 2012. While studying in Beijing, I furnished a studio in the outskirts of the city for my graduate work, and friends and artists from Peking University and Tsinghua University would visit and entertain spirited discussions over drinks. My “Beijing Period” expanded my creative scope and artistic direction, initiating in me a new path toward abstractionism. I began working with acrylics as a new medium, while expressing my creative spirit in more philosophical reflections on our universe, aesthetics, and self-cultivation for spiritual transcendence, among which the exuberant imaginations and mercurial color shifts in the Daoist aesthetics of Zhuangzi inspired me to create with greater spontaneity and flexibility. During the “Beijing Period,” I began integrating Western abstract expressionism with Chinese paintings, as the works of Chinese artists such as Fan Kuan, Xu Wei, Zhang Daqian, and Western artists such as Jackson Pollock, Jasper Johns, Gerhard Richter, and Jean-Michel Basquiat have all bestowed much significant inspiration upon me. 

I believe that for all forms of art, artists are required not only of technical abilities, but also of abilities to face ourselves honestly. We must then integrate our experiences and realizations of life into discourses with ourselves, the world, and the universe, and become vehicles of our psyches and emotions so as to empower our works with spirituality. In my works, the morals and symbols that are integral to my life, such as The Little Prince, roses, architecture, philosophy, poetry, and classical music, are all essential groundworks of my memories and are what I love dearly. In my works of abstract expressions, I am inclined to employ colors and compositions that create tension, and I enjoy piling wet pigments to build up layers of strokes that, upon this parallel process of creation and destruction, render the traces of time and space to be visible, conjuring a unique perspicacity beyond 3-dimensions.  Through my staggered layering of pigments created by each brushstroke and sgraffito on canvas, I integrated conscious visual arrangements with the subconsciousness to evoke universal empathy, manifesting the traditional and the contemporary, as well as Chinese and Western styles of painting. Art opened another universe for me, empowering me to travel between and merge with another time and space. Every great artist spends their entire lifetime painting themselves, and for thirty years, I've continuously narrated my life through my works. My works are an epitome of my life. They not only express my inner world, but also communicate my views of life, my sensibilities, and my yearnings. The art that I dream of is filled with poetic sentiments, musical rhythms, religious purity, and philosophical ideals of upward enterprise, manifesting itself as works that sooth our spirit and offer enlightenment, just as The Little Prince have done for me. 

We stand on the shore of reality, and the yonder shore stand our ideals, with an ocean of purgatory in between. Throughout my sixty years of life, I've seen myself a pessimist. However, it is this very pessimism that has driven my longing to pursue happiness and to appreciate the value of life. I've always believed that life's suffering comes not from its ephemerality, but from the shackles we place on ourselves. Although the rose in The Little Prince would wither, her pollens would engender new roses, whose petals would continue to emanate its fragrance. There is never a true death in the universe, as life always perpetuates its existence in other forms and spaces, and this impression of eternity is what I have persistently expressed in my works. Art is a career for those who are obsessively devoted, and I have pledged my whole life to it. The space for artistic creation is a purely spiritual, and it calls me to journey into more profound explorations for life. Since it was in art that I have found myself, the abstract world that I construct in my paintings is actually more real than is my reality. I hope my works could inspire more to contemplate and search for the meaning and purpose of our objective existence in life. The peak of perfection might be difficult to surmount, but I will continue to devote my life to its pursuit with all my might. It is my sincere wish that my artistic journey and my works would leave behind more inspirations and aesthetic values for our world.