A Transhistorical Dialogue Between Eastern Philosophy and the Aesthetics of Works on Paper

“Solitude is like a rain.
It rises from the sea toward the evening;
from a distant, veiled horizon,
it ascends to the sky, its accustomed home,
and from the sky descends upon the sleeping town.”
— Rainer Maria Rilke, Solitude

Amid the shifting light and shadow of Taipei Art Week, Yi&C. joins hands with Tina Keng Gallery to present the group exhibition Solitude at the Horizon. Inspired by the profound poetic sensibility of Rainer Maria Rilke, the exhibition brings together works on paper by five towering figures of modern and contemporary art—Sanyu, Yun Gee, Zao Wou-Ki, Wang Pan-Youn, and Su Xiaobai—unfolding a philosophical dialogue that traverses time, geography, and medium.
Though shaped by distinct historical circumstances and artistic trajectories, these five artists share a profound affinity: each takes Western artistic media as a foundation while infusing them with the philosophical spirit and sensibility of the East. From Sanyu and Yun Gee’s effortless synthesis of Eastern and Western aesthetics amid the streets of early twentieth-century Paris, to Zao Wou-Ki’s creation of an abstract, ink-like cosmos upon paper; from Wang Pan-Youn’s poetic solitude, constructed through the radical economy of minimalism and empty space, to Su Xiaobai’s fusion of lacquer and oil paint and his penetrating inquiry into the material philosophy of our contemporary world—the artists distill personal experience, existential reflection, and profound solitude into the intimate scale of paper.
Across these works, solitude is not merely a state of isolation, but a space of contemplation: a quiet terrain where the individual encounters the self, memory, nature, and the infinite. Each work becomes a landscape of the inner world, its forms and silences extending beyond the physical limits of the paper and converging along an aesthetic horizon that stretches across generations.