LIN Yen Wei uses digital cameras to capture close-ups of animal heads and busts. Using depth of field, he deploys a painting style similar to that of photo-realism in the late 1960s. The animals in his paintings are actually renderings of ready-made sculpture objects found in the human world, all of them domesticated without exception, and has even become a pet. Their image is both directly and indirectly influenced by the forms of Disney animals.

Although his portraits are not of man, LIN Yen Wei’s cheap and coarse animal statues touches upon the real world, alluding to the industrialization and commercialization of the contemporary life. Human existence has long become materialized and is continuously changing due to the high turnover rate of commodities. The animal statues in his paintings contain human-like eyes and smiles, and can be regarded as a zoomorphic portrayal of man’s self-alienation in an age of consumerism.

• 1987 Born in Pingtung, Taiwan
• 2007 BA, Department of Fine Arts, National University of Tainan, Tainan, Taiwan
• 2012 MFA, Department of Arts and Design, National Hsinchu University of Education, Hsinchu, Taiwan
• Now lives and works in Hsinchu, Taiwan

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2023
• “LIN Yen Wei”, ESLITE GALLERY, Taipei, Taiwan

2020
• “LIN Yen Wei”, ESLITE GALLERY, Taipei, Taiwan

2014
• “LIN Yen Wei”, ESLITE GALLERY, Taipei, Taiwan

2008
• “Lin Yen Wei”, National University of Tainan, Tainan, Taiwan

GROUP EXHIBITIONS

2022
• “Artificial Landscape - City as Installation Art”, Yu-Hsiu Museum, Nantou, Taiwan

2019
• “Stance”, ESLITE GALLERY, Taipei, Taiwan
• “A Fairy Tale in Red Times: Works from the White Rabbit Collection”, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne , Australia

2017
• “Take in the scenery”, ESLITE GALLERY, Taipei, Taiwan

2016
• “View from the Window”, ESLITE GALLERY, Taipei, Taiwan

2012
• “Man‧Animal‧Landscape: Hai-Hsin HUANG, LIN Yen Wei, and LIN Wei-Hsiang”, ESLITE GALLERY, Taipei, Taiwan

2011
• “19 Solo Shows about Painting”, Platform China, Beijing, China

2010
• “Generation Paralleled: Exposition Communication Young Artist Across the Taiwan Straits”, Hsinchu, Taiwan
• “I MAY”, National Hsinchu University MFA Group Exhibition, Hsinchu, Taiwan

2009
• “Complete Statements”, National Hsinchu University MFA Group Exhibition, Hsinchu, Taiwan
• “National Large-sized Oil Paintings Exhibition 2009”, Taichung City Seaport Art Center, Taichung, Taiwan
• “Freedoms”, Taoyuan Cultural Affairs Bureau, Taoyuan, Taiwan

PUBLIC COLLECTIONS

• White Rabbit Gallery, Sydney, Australia