TAIPEI.- Amid the noise of contemporary art today, we observe two contrasting yet equally troubling tendencies. One indulges in surface, sensation, and expression; the other replaces artistic inquiry with predetermined political positions. Although different in appearance, both share a common crisis: art increasingly loses its intellectual ambition, while artists forfeit the spiritual responsibility of confronting the world through their work.

This exhibition emerges from such a moment to reconsider Modernism—not as a historical period or a visual style defined by abstraction, geometry, or Minimalism, but as a method of thinking. At its core, Modernism challenges artists to believe that art can continually redefine itself, pursuing an ideal that always remains just beyond reach. Without this aspiration, art risks becoming mere information, entertainment, or consumption rather than a force capable of reshaping history.

Through the works of Li Yuan-chia, David Diao, and Chen Shiau-Peng, the exhibition traces three distinct yet interconnected approaches to Modernism.

Against the backdrop of the Cold War and cultural displacement, Li Yuan-chia reduced the universe to a single point, transforming abstraction into a meditation on space, emptiness, and the cosmos. His pursuit of radical reduction resonates profoundly with Eastern philosophy, where simplicity becomes a path toward essence rather than absence.

For more than five decades, David Diao has examined Modernism from within. Through works such as Suprematist Prison, his investigations of Konstantin Melnikov’s house, and paintings that merge cartography, art history, and personal memory, Diao continually remaps the structures of Modernism. His work is an ongoing intellectual dialogue with the history that shaped him.

Chen Shiau-Peng extends this dialogue into the present. Her geometric paintings transform maps, grids, and chessboards into reflections on urban space, systems of power, and individual agency. Rather than rejecting modernist order, she reimagines it from the perspective of lived experience.





Together, these three artists demonstrate that the significance of Asian artists lies not in adding “Eastern” elements to Modernism, but in offering new ways to rethink and extend it. Modernism’s enduring legacy is not a style, but a spirit—one that continually challenges art to redefine its own possibilities.

David Diao

David Diao (b. 1943, Chengdu, China) lives and works in New York. Over the past five decades, he has continuously examined the history, power structures, and ideological foundations of modernism from within, transforming abstract painting into a critical investigation of art history, cultural identity, and institutional systems. As Diao has remarked, “Almost all my work has a backstory.”

Since the 1980s, Diao has appropriated canonical modernist vocabularies—including Suprematism, Barnett Newman, and De Stijl—to reconsider how art history constructs value and authority. Through works such as the Suprematist Prison series, as well as paintings based on exhibition histories, auction records, and studio addresses, he employs a cool yet incisive visual language to interrogate the internal structures of modernism. Rather than reducing his Chinese heritage to a cultural signifier, Diao rethinks modernism from its margins.

Diao’s work has been the subject of a major retrospective at the UCCA Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing, and is held in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, M+, and the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, among many other leading institutions. He is widely regarded as one of the most significant artists for reconsidering the legacy of modernism today.

Li Yuan-chia

Li Yuan-chia (1929–1994) was born in Guangxi, China, and moved to Taiwan in 1949. He studied at the Taipei Normal School under Li Chun-shan and, in 1956, co-founded the Ton Fan Group, becoming a key pioneer of Chinese abstract art. During the 1960s, he lived in Italy and the United Kingdom, exhibiting at Signals Gallery and Lisson Gallery in London. He later settled in Cumbria, where he founded the LYC Art Centre and developed a long-term practice spanning art, education, and community engagement.

Li’s work brought Eastern philosophy into dialogue with Western modernism. From his early abstract paintings to his renowned “point” works, he consistently explored the relationships between the cosmos, space, and spirituality. Through radically reduced forms, he responded to modernism’s search for essence while introducing ideas of emptiness, nothingness, and cosmic order drawn from Daoist and broader Eastern thought, thereby opening a spiritual dimension distinct from dominant Euro-American modernism.

As one of the earliest Chinese abstract artists to establish a significant presence in Europe, Li did not treat Eastern culture as a visual signifier. Instead, he transformed it into a method for rethinking modernism. His importance lies not only in his role as a pioneer of Chinese abstraction, but also in demonstrating that modernism’s future need not remain confined to the West; it could be renewed through Eastern thought.

Chen Shiau-Peng

Chen Shiau-Peng (b. 1976, Penghu, Taiwan) is one of the leading voices in contemporary Taiwanese abstraction.

Chen’s early practice explored form, composition, and the concept of infinity. In recent years, her work has expanded to investigate urban space, cartography, mobility, and national identity through the language of geometric abstraction. Employing a rigorously restrained visual vocabulary, she transforms maps, grids, game boards, and architectural structures into ways of understanding the world.

Her work extends abstraction beyond formal concerns, offering a sustained reflection on contemporary spatial experience, social order, and the legacy of modernism.

She has held solo exhibitions at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Chiayi Art Museum, Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts, IT Park, and SNO Contemporary Art Projects, among others. Her international residencies include Anderson Ranch Arts Center, 18th Street Arts Center, the Glenfiddich Artist in Residence programme, Gyeongju Arts Center, and the Taipei Artist Village.