Taiwan artist on Plato, scrap metal and history

Plato's Carriage of Soul is one of Taiwan artist Hsi Shih-pin's metallic sculptures displayed at his first solo show in Beijing. Photo provided to China Daily

The artist associates the use of sharp angles to the tailoring job of his mother. He grew up watching his mother work with scissors and clothing clips.

He softens the coldness of steel by adding pendent artificial crystals and refined, exquisite patterns of flowers. Underneath the rationality of his works, Hsi instills the tenderness of family bond to reveal his emotional side.

Hsi pays respect to his mother in Holy Mother, another work on display. He created a figure half based on Mother Mary, inspired by the early Renaissance paintings and half based on Palden Lhamo, a wrathful deity in Tibetan Buddhism.

"My mother suffers from facial nerve disorders－she isn't able to control half of her face. She's become very nervous. She has been trying both Western medical treatments and traditional Chinese medicines. Yet, I think her face hasn't change much and still looks pretty. I keep telling her that," he says.

He adds that to a child, his or her mother's look is free from the common perceptions of Oriental or Western aesthetics.

Hsi says that in real life, he doesn't live like an artist. He likes to stay at home, raising his two cats and watching science or history shows on TV.

"Sometimes you need logical thinking like that of a mathematician," he says of being a contemporary artist.

"When you work on a public art project, you need to work and think like an architect."

If you go

10 am-6:30 pm, closed on Sundays and Mondays, through April 19. Soka Art Center, 798 art district, 2 Jiuxianqiao Road, Chaoyang district. 010-5978-4808.

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