Draft:Lo Chan Peng
Lo Chan Peng | |
|---|---|
羅展鵬 | |
| Born | 1983 (age 42–43) Taiwan |
| Education | Chinese Culture University National Taiwan Normal University |
| Known for | Painting |
| Awards | Beautiful Bizarre Art Prize, Grand Prize (2023) |
| Website | lochanpeng |
Lo Chan Peng (羅展鵬; born 1983) is a Taiwanese painter. He is best known for hyperrealist portraits in oil, first of young Taiwanese in the late 2000s and later of religious and historical subjects, and has also worked extensively in ink.[1][2]
His oil painting Eternity Dawn won the Grand Prize of the Beautiful Bizarre Art Prize in 2023, a year after taking the portrait prize at the Velázquez International Painting and Sculpture Competition.[3][4] His paintings are held by the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts and by the Hoki Museum in Chiba, Japan.[5][6]
Early life and education
[edit]Lo was born in Taiwan in 1983.[3] As a student he supported himself by teaching art and drawing portraits for visitors in Yingge, a pottery town outside Taipei.[7] He studied fine art at Chinese Culture University and went on to a master's degree in Western painting at National Taiwan Normal University.[1]
Career
[edit]Early portrait series
[edit]Lo's 2009 solo exhibition Strawberry Generation Studio Invasion, at AKI Gallery in Taipei, took its title from the "strawberry generation" label attached to Taiwanese born in the 1980s.[1][8] The hyperrealist portraits of his own generation brought him early attention, following the Kaohsiung Award he had won the previous year.[1]
He continued with the Ashen Face series, in which the sitters' faces are drained of colour. When these paintings were shown in The Edge of Black (2013), also at AKI Gallery, the China Times read the pallid faces as an expression of anxiety among young people in Taiwan.[1]
Ink paintings
[edit]A residency in Berlin in 2011 led Lo to combine ink with acrylic in largely black-and-white paintings.[8] These were brought together in Ink Haze (墨嵐), a 2017 solo exhibition at Daguan Gallery in Taipei. Writing in Art Investment, Hsu Woan-jen saw the show as a move away from social observation toward more spiritual subject matter; the critic Liu Hsing-yu made a similar argument in Artouch.[8][9]
Since 2016
[edit]Lo's wife died in 2016, and critics have treated her death as a turning point in his work.[2][10] The Lumière series that followed in 2018 contains no human figures, the only such series in his career.[2] His subjects then widened beyond Taiwan. Syrian Children depicted child victims of the Syrian civil war, and the Historical Figures series portrayed people he regarded as drivers of modern history, among them Abraham Lincoln, Charles Darwin, Winston Churchill, Che Guevara and Karl Marx; both series appeared in the 2020 exhibition Those Changed by History and Those Who Change History at Daguan Gallery.[2][10]
At ART TAIPEI 2022 he showed Soul, painted on a transparent acrylic panel rather than canvas. Artouch picked it as one of seventeen highlights of the fair, and the Liberty Times discussed the work in its report on the fair's opening day.[11][12] In recent years Lo has also exhibited in the United States, Europe and Japan, including a 2024 solo exhibition at the church of San Filippo e Giacomo in Naples and a 2025 show at Corey Helford Gallery in Los Angeles.[13]
Style
[edit]Lo builds his oil paintings up in many layers, and the paint that accumulates along the edges of the canvas is left visible as a record of the process; the art historian Pan An-yi has compared these built-up edges to geological strata.[14][10] Critics have also noted the contrast between the smooth finish of his figures and deliberate disruptions of the surface, such as scraping and dripping.[2][6] Commentary on his later paintings often connects them to his Christian faith.[2][6]
Recognition
[edit]Lo won the Union Bank of Taiwan New Artist Award in 2004, the Chimei Arts Award in 2005 and 2007, and the Kaohsiung Award in 2008.[1][13] His painting Les Fleurs du Mal received a purchase award, an honourable mention in portraiture and the people's choice award at the 15th Art Renewal Center International Salon in 2020.[15] Eternity Dawn (2021) took the portrait prize (Premio Retrato) at the second Velázquez International Painting and Sculpture Competition in 2022 and the Grand Prize of the Beautiful Bizarre Art Prize in 2023.[4][3]
He has also sat on prize juries, serving for the Union Bank of Taiwan New Artist Award between 2017 and 2020 and for the figurative category of the 35th Chimei Arts Award in 2022.[13]
Collections
[edit]The National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts holds Youth Diary of the Strawberry Cell Division 3 (2008).[5] In 2022 the Hoki Museum, a Japanese museum devoted to realist painting, acquired his work, and Taiwanese media reported him as the first Taiwanese artist to enter its collection.[6] According to the artist, his paintings are also held by the Chimei Museum, the Union Bank of Taiwan Cultural and Educational Foundation and the El Segundo Museum of Art.[13]
Selected exhibitions
[edit]Solo
[edit]- 2025 – The Dream of Yūgen, Corey Helford Gallery, Los Angeles[13]
- 2020 – Those Changed by History and Those Who Change History, Daguan Gallery, Taipei[2]
- 2017 – Ink Haze, Daguan Gallery, Taipei[8][9]
- 2013 – The Edge of Black, AKI Gallery, Taipei[1]
- 2009 – Strawberry Generation Studio Invasion, AKI Gallery, Taipei[1]
Group
[edit]- 2023 and 2024 – group exhibitions at the Hoki Museum, Japan[13]
- 2014 – Jie (Boundaries): Contemporary Art in Taiwan, Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University[13]
- 2013 – Experience03: Truth, El Segundo Museum of Art, Los Angeles, where he was also artist in residence that year[10]
- 2011 – Cross-strait contemporary art exhibition, National Art Museum of China, Beijing[13]
- 2010 – Post-Youth, National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts[13]
References
[edit]- ^ a b c d e f g h Wu, Yin-hui (2013-06-16). "羅展鵬「黑的邊緣」 以蒼白容顏畫社會焦慮". China Times (in Chinese).
- ^ a b c d e f g Lin, You-cheng (2021-01-10). "非現實的真實存在——羅展鵬繪畫中所覺知的萬物因果". Art Emperor (in Chinese).
- ^ a b c "Grand Prize Winner – Beautiful Bizarre Art Prize 2023". Beautiful Bizarre Art Prize. 2023. Retrieved 2026-06-30.
- ^ a b "II Concurso Internacional de Pintura y Escultura Velázquez". NetEase (in Chinese). 2022.
- ^ a b "Youth Diary of the Strawberry Cell Division 3". National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts. Retrieved 2026-06-30.
- ^ a b c d "台灣藝壇首位殊榮，羅展鵬藝術作品榮獲日本寫實繪畫 HOKI 美術館典藏". Everyday Object (in Chinese). 2022-10-06.
- ^ Chung, Ying-chen (2020). "在幽暗曠野上尋光的孩子". IW (in Chinese).
- ^ a b c d Hsu, Woan-jen (June 2017). "屬靈的國度 實相顯現——評羅展鵬「墨嵐」系列". Art Investment (in Chinese). pp. 190–191.
- ^ a b Liu, Hsing-yu (2017). "墨嵐——羅展鵬個展". Artouch (in Chinese).
- ^ a b c d Pan, An-yi (2020). "The Struggle to Perfection: the Paintings of Lo Chan Peng". Lo Chan Peng 2020. Enlighten Gallery.
- ^ "ART TAIPEI 2022 must-see works selected by the Artouch editors". Artouch (in Chinese). 2022-10-21.
- ^ Ling, Mei-hsueh (2022-10-22). "不走巨作路線 台北藝博首日 畫廊開啟新世代視野". Liberty Times (in Chinese).
- ^ a b c d e f g h i "About the Artist". Lo Chan Peng official website. Retrieved 2026-06-30.
- ^ Lo, Chan Peng. "Before Arrival — The Twenty Years of Lo Chan Peng". Lo Chan Peng official website. Retrieved 2026-06-30.
- ^ "Chan Peng Lo – 15th International ARC Salon". Art Renewal Center. Retrieved 2026-06-30.
External links
[edit]Category:1983 births Category:Living people Category:Taiwanese painters Category:Taiwanese contemporary artists Category:National Taiwan Normal University alumni Category:Chinese Culture University alumni