Draft:Lee Jinn-Shyan
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| Born | 1957
Madou Township, Tainan County, Taiwan |
| Died | March 4, 2019 (aged 61-62) |
| Residence | Kaohsiung City, Taiwan |
| Nationality | Republic of China (Taiwan) |
| Alias | Censer Master |
| Language | Taiwanese Hokkien, Standard Chinese, English |
| Education | Division of Western-style Painting, Department of Fine Arts, National Taiwan Normal University
Institute of Fine Arts, New York University |
| Occupation | Artist, Teacher, Editor, Curator |
| Relatives | Younger Brother: Lee Jun-Du |
Lee Jinn-Shyan (Taiwanese Hokkien: Lí Tsùn-hiân, English: Jinnshyan Lee, alias Censer Master [Taiwanese Hokkien: Lôo-tsú], 1957 – March 4, 2019) was a Taiwanese painter, art critic, curator, and magazine editor. Lee was born in Madou, Tainan County and came of age in the port area of Kaohsiung City. His paintings mainly portray the labor class, the ambience of the port city, and the Austronesian culture. They are rough and uninhibited in style, interlaced by nativist imagery and brimming with quotidian elements. He was an associate professor in the Department of Architecture at Kao Yuan University and the director of Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts.
Life
[edit]Lee was born in Madou Township, Tainan County in 1957. He moved to Beigang Township, Yunlin County with his family for a short period, and settled in Kaohsiung City when he was a second-grader. After graduating from the Division of Western-style Painting, Department of Fine Arts, National Taiwan Normal University in 1979, he worked as an art teacher at junior and senior high schools. He enrolled in the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University in 1986. No sooner did he finish his studies in 1989 than he returned to Taiwan.
Lee once confessed that Kaohsiung was where he spent most of his life although he was born in Madou, Tainan. Belonging to the boomer generation, Lee personally experienced the oppression in the martial law period. Nonetheless, the port of Kaohsiung was undergoing rapid industrialization and public construction at that time, hence a flourishing scene. The sweating working class was ubiquitous as far as the eye could see. Lee’s senior high school teacher Luo Qing-Yun often led him and his classmates to sketch in various places, which engraved the “roughness” of Kaohsiung on his memory. Then Lee translated such an impression on canvases, demonstrating an expressive technique that emphasizes roughness and stark contrast of colors rather than the style of en plein air that pursues refinement and elegant beauty in the art system of the Japanese colonial period.
Between the late 1970s and the 1980s, Lee extensively depicted Kaohsiung’s industrial scenes. Railroads, wharves, factories, cement tanks, oil tanks, and chimneys had come up as the subjects of his works. Inspired by his life experiences in the melting pot-like “Big Apple,” Lee reinterpreted the history, ethnic groups, and languages in Taiwan and incorporated them into his works after his homecoming from the U.S. in 1989, foremost his paintings that contain the imagery of Taiwanese Hokkien in the form of homonymic Chinese characters. In 1991, soon after the lifting of martial law in Taiwan, Lee launched his 10-year “Taiwan Project.” From 1991 to 2000, he conducted field surveys across Taiwan, not only personally visiting the sites, but also poring over local chronicles. His field surveys covered a total of 12 counties and cities, beginning from Taitung, followed by Miaoli, Penghu, Hualien, Yilan, Nantou, Changhua, Yunlin, Chiayi, Pingtung, Tainan, and Kaohsiung.
In 2004, Lee was an associate professor in the Department of Architecture at Kao Yuan University. Kuan Bi-Ling, the then head of the Bureau of Cultural Affairs, Kaohsiung City Government, appointed Lee to the position of the third director of In 2004, Lee was an associate professor in the Department of Architecture at Kao Yuan University. Kuan Bi-Ling, the then head of the Bureau of Cultural Affairs, Kaohsiung City Government, appointed Lee to the position of the third director of Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts. During his incumbency as the museum director, Lee not only initiated the “Developmental Project on Contemporary Art of Austronesian Languages” which extensively collected works of contemporary Austronesian art, but also organized the exhibition titled “Across Oceans and Time: Art in the Contemporary Pacific” in 2007. Other exhibitions held during his incumbency include “A Theater of Taiwanese Common Culture” and “Formosa Mambo.” The museum also launched the bimonthly Art Accrediting. Moreover, Lee not only requested funding from the Kaohsiung City Government to acquire large-scale sculptures by Ju Ming and Li Zhen, but also took a leading role in the addition construction and display of the museum. Lee stepped down as the director in 2008 and resumed his teaching role at Kao Yuan University.
From 2008 to 2014, Lee served as the head of the Art Center at Kao Yuan University. He died of illness on March 4, 2019 at the age of 62.
Major Works
[edit]Works
[edit]· Seashore in Taisi, photo collage, sticker, 40 × 95 cm, 2000
· Ship Docking, acrylic paint on canvas, 45 × 38 cm × 3, 2003
· Kui-Lān-Pha-Hué, acrylic paint on canvas, 116 × 91 cm, 2017
Curatorial Projects
[edit]· 1991 | Lee cooperated with Ni Tsai-Chin in curating the “101 Formosa Free-range Chicken Election Campaign” at the Door Art Space in Kaohsiung, which satirized the outdated National Assembly.
· 1996 | Lee served as a co-curator of the “Taipei Biennial: The Quest for Identity” that highlighted the subjectivity of Taiwanese art.
· 2007 | Lee served as a co-curator of the exhibition titled “Across Oceans and Time: Art in the Contemporary Pacific.” The exhibition not only established a cooperative platform for Taiwanese and South Pacific artists, but also facilitated Austronesian cultural exchange among Taiwan, New Zealand, Australia, and New Caledonia.
· 2015 | Lee curated the exhibition titled “Island‧Islander─Fish Snipers’ Island Series” at the Pier-2 Art Center.
Anthology
[edit]· Southern Viewpoints on Taiwan Art (Taipei City: Taipei Fine Arts Museum, 1996).
Memorial Monograph
[edit]In April 2021, in commemoration of the 2nd anniversary of Lee’s death, Gong Jow-Jiun and Hsu Yuan-Da co-authored the monograph titled Travelling Taiwan with Artist Jinn-Shyan Lee, published by Imyself. A number of symposiums featuring Lee also took place in Taipei, Taichung, and Kaohsiung.