Cherry Building exhibit in Cedar Rapids brings new dimension to abstract arts from Taiwanese artist

CEDAR RAPIDS — “The heart wants what it wants,” Emily Dickinson once wrote. But sometimes, it longs for things that the brain can’t quite articulate.

This summer, the Schwartzkopf Gallery’s first international artist expounds on the classic poet’s wisdom about longing through several series spanning written and visual mediums.

With over 60 pieces on exhibit at the Cherry Building, Taiwanese artist Wan-Yen Hsieh dominates the space often split by several artists in rotating exhibits. Through abstracts, geometry, haikus and photography, Hsieh depicts spaces mostly bereft of people, objects, specific lights or times to help the viewer envision the realm that remains unpainted.

It’s a question and answer process that has guided her painting for decades.

“I always think ‘(how) will I express myself?’ All my memories, feelings, all that happened to me. I’m longing for something uncertain, something new and something (where) I can push my boundaries,” Hsieh said. “Each painting is a struggle, but in a comfortable way, because I can find myself a little bit more, or I will find something new that I never knew.”

Much of the exhibit, “Longing for Longing,” was created specifically for Cedar Rapids over the last two years.

See elements of German modernism and Chinese inspiration intertwined in what the artist describes as “a dream swaying between wakefulness and sleep, searching for beauty, poetry and a way out.”

Periphery displays

Throughout the gallery, Hsieh displays several distinct art forms that engage the senses in various ways.

Near the door, a photography exhibit, “Patchwork,” zooms out on the impact of tiny things.

Large photos depict arrangements using dried pieces of acrylic paint from the artist’s palette. Intersected with rulers to show their exact size, each chip forms a kaleidoscope of visions in a series where dreams, memories, longing and imagination intersect — foreshadowing the rest of the exhibit’s forms.

  Buy Photo

Hsieh discovered the beauty of the leftover paint, collected over years, after scraping off her brass paint palette. They were simply too pretty to throw away, she said.

In their abstract arrangements, a surprising amount of detail can be found without effort, introducing a new context to the practicality in abstraction — perhaps contrary to mainstream beliefs.

“Some people are afraid of abstraction. But can you say how the form of love is, or the shape of pain? Our feelings and thoughts, they are all abstract,” Hsieh said.

Just around the corner, a black and white photo exhibit spanning everyday scenes in Europe showcases another skill of the artist, who has been a photographer since the 1980s.

  Buy Photo

The photos span decades, from the early 1990s to the late 2010s. But, in a timeless stitching, they appear as if they were all taken in about the same era.

Double exposures of some scenes collide as a montage after the photographer accidentally reused film — yielding to a space where past and present tangibly collide.

“Spacetime,” a series of free abstractions and smaller pieces driven by sharp lines, dabble in acrylic, oil and dispersion — incorporating metals to add a near-holographic dimension over stripes of neutral black, silver and gray.

“I like this feeling about time — the time goes past, and I’m still here,” Hsieh explained.

The resident of Norden-City, Germany, typically spends upward of two years on very large canvasses, several feet wide and tall. But she said these small pieces, each side between about one and two feet, represented a new freedom rather than a challenge in condensing expressions.

On another wall, squares and rectangles in a spectrum of vibrant colors provide a map for their accompanying haikus. Each haiku, a hobby of the artist, started in Mandarin before being translated into German, then English.

“After painting all day long, I need something for my free time,” Hsieh said.

The centerpiece

Anchoring the exhibit is a series of acrylics layered onto Taiwanese cotton sheets.

On the front, each is dominated by precision through geometric shapes that seem to defy stereotypes of abstract art. Each one assembles into pleasing forms with a specific point of view, but the patterns they follow evade articulation.

  Buy Photo

“They always have something to do with my life — old life, past life, or the life I’m dreaming for in the future,” Hsieh said.

When Hsieh started the series, she would dye each sheet before painting layers over it — one feeling at a time. After it was finished, the dye bleeding through to the opposite side transformed into an entirely different piece that evolved independently.

She hopes the viewer, like her, can use the art to process whatever they are feeling — past experiences, present anxieties or future hopes.

“I want people to see my paintings and find their own way — what they like, what they don’t like, what they’re feeling,” she said.

How it happened

  Buy Photo

Cherry Building co-owner Lijun Chadima met Hsieh a few years ago through a trip to Germany, where she regularly visited her daughter and son-in-law.

A few years ago, a mutual childhood friend introduced the two in Cologne. Before long, the Taiwanese natives were getting along well, and there was room in the Schwartzkopf Gallery’s exhibit schedule, which is typically booked years out.

Hsieh’s exhibition there is the first from an international artist.

Hsieh typically produces much larger pieces, but transporting them was not logistically feasible. The mix of small and medium pieces — relative to what she typically produces — were made to custom fit the dimensions of the gallery.

Comments: Features reporter Elijah Decious can be reached at (319) 398-8340 or elijah.decious@thegazette.com.

Get the latest restaurant news, food reviews and insider tips from the Chew on This newsletter.