Born in Beijing and now based in Taipei, Dan Xie began painting in 2009. In 2014, she received the Taipei City Department of Cultural Affairs Young Artist Grant, and in 2017 she turned to ceramic sculpture. She has continued creating ever since, and currently runs Xiangdanran Studio, where she both produces her own work and teaches the art of hand-building.

Growing up in the Hutongs of the Imperial City, the Eastern garden was not only a cultural image but also a childhood paradise of lingering hours. Yet modern life is hurried and restless; though we are not far from our ancestors, we find ourselves unable to truly return to that dreamlike ideal of the East.

In this exhibition, the artist shapes an endless garden with ceramic sculptures and paintings — a garden that exists neither on maps nor within time. Stones, fireflies, plants, and fleeting hours grow out of the cracks of reality. She draws from the scholar’s desk — bonsai, miniature rockeries, scholar’s stones, screens, and vessels — reviving these age-old motifs with playful imagination, in an attempt to create a world both ancient and innocent, serene yet alive.

In her sculptures and paintings, she boldly employs mixed media — clay, glaze, glass, pigments, and other materials — layering textures and sensations. By doing so, she seeks to dissolve conventions, blurring the boundaries between sculpture and painting, art and life, past and present, old and new, form and thought, reality and dream, function and ornament.

“Gazing inward, one sees the myriad forms.” Ancient Eastern wisdom teaches that the true nature of the world is ultimately found within. To perceive life and seek a whole inner cosmos is the ultimate purpose of existence. Artistic creation, perhaps, is one romantic path toward that destination.

Before mountains became mountains, before waters became waters — when you step into this garden of breath, memory, perception, and imagination, you will find that time halts, boundaries dissolve, and all things turn and return in endless cycles. This garden does not belong to the artist alone —

Close your eyes, return to yourself. When the heart begins to see, it may be that this garden quietly begins to grow in your world as well.