1

Every viewer is the "observer" of their own life and should enter a work of art through their eyes.

With the perspective of the "observer," Wen Yipei revisits the modernity of urban space, who applies restrained emotion and delicate language and is keen on generating a sense of space between the negative and positive, depth and flatness.

To create a sense of distance and authenticity, he uses microscopic airbrushing to apply an indistinguishable layer of gold or silver powder in places so that the black in the picture no longer looks congested and the air begins to circulate. The rectangular window frame – in crosses, square, or pound signs - divide the image and instantaneously coalesce into a series of distinct urban landscapes.

2

Wen Yipei's materials come partly from observing and reproducing modernist architectural forms and partly from the body's reaction to the surrounding space and invisible objects. Structurally, he adopts exaggerated and obvious "Mondrian-esque" compositional elements; his flat surface erases the actual function, aims, and texture of the windows, reducing them to a mere hint of perspective, and pushing the gaze toward the space around the window frames, allowing one to fall into different time and place continuously.

These minimalist window frames have a specific thickness, adding a sense of materiality to the image while complementing the spatial depth of the pictures. Grounded on the two-dimensional plane, the key components shaping the works of art include vertical lines, horizontal lines, parallel lines, and even diagonal lines derived from perpendicular ones to the surfaces, which are the conduits of the mode of the artist's pictorial language.

From the painting perspective, natural forms are disorderly, while the picture plane can challenge various limitations of the physical space and establishes a new order.

3

An irregularly-shaped red floats into the sky, seemingly blocking something, a light spot in white jumps out at some point, and a lingering dark shadow passes over from nowhere interspersed in the picture, all of which add to the heterogeneous presence, suggesting some narrative…  Through fictional and conceptual techniques, paintings are transformed from their natural forms, creating an abstract, surreal, minimalist, and even suprematist atmosphere. This outcome is related to Mondrian's "Neoplasticism" 's influence on Western art history.

In 1914, when Mondrian returned to the Netherlands from Paris, he dived into the territory of abstraction influenced by Cubism; his return to the Netherlands allowed him to develop a more simplified style of abstraction, which he called "Neoplasticism," which he worked with only three primary colors and a grid of black vertical and horizontal lines on a primed canvas, dividing the image with rhythm.

Although Wen Yipei's works are not entirely removed from the realistic scenes, reaching for the “disfigured” abstract style, instead he preserved significance and aesthetics represented by modernist architecture, and above which, he added a layer of aesthetics that is secluded, rational and reticent from a speculative perspective. Thus, Wen Yipei's paintings are realistic but use some abstract painterly expressions.

4

Under prolonged observation and anchoring, the space is infused with a half-closed, half-open mental state: we live simultaneously in the actual architectural space and the vicissitude of phantom space, which emerges with body movements. The gray areas present gray territory, and the few highlights and dark shadows reveal the claustrophobic character of the actual space.

Dialectical thinking is encapsulated in the artist's observation and experience of the "window" perspective - the architecture controls and surrounds the seemingly open and transparent interior, and a higher dimension of consciousness controls the architectural patterns, which are constant reminders of how the body should move ...... while space provides a sense of security, it also disciplines human behavior. What space is left unregulated?

The "Static Frames" provide Wen Yipei the perspective to observe the world and the channel through which to follow and respond to reality,  and ultimately all actual escapes or virtual crossings would flow out from these windows.

**Note

Regarding the title "Static Frames,": "Static" points to the subject and content of the pictures, being calm, rational, and static; "Window frames" does not necessarily suggest the physical space beyond an actual window but encompass perspectives, regardless of where one stands, it points to the view one perceives beyond one’s standpoint. 

Text/Ying-Ying Zhang