“A work strongly influenced by Oriental decorative patterns, but where the spectator sees his expectations modified with every step and with just the turn of the head, the welcoming landscape can become a typical form of camouflage used by military soldiers during the wars.”
Jose Iñiguez, Diario de Sevilla
GARDEN PASSAGE – 2003
Paintings, panels, cushions, armchairs, beds, floors, walls and roofs are just some of the media Michael Lin uses in developing his works. Breaking with the conventionalism of oil painting on canvas, the artist has drawn us into a new world where his paintings and fabrics invade the entire space with an explosion of colour.
Lin’s creative process reflects the industrial manufacture of the fabrics and traditional decorative arts. The artist contracts teams of assistants who adapt to a work method similar to that of assembly line production, positioning themselves between the most classic tradition and modernity.
In one of the NMAC’s blocks, Lin erected four panels which divide the foundation’s reception block into four areas. Each panel has a circular door and the back wall was substituted with glass so as to allow observation of the exterior garden. In this way, “Passage Garden” plays with the idea of reutilisation and transformation of space through the recreation of a Chinese garden within the block. The philosophy of Chinese gardens lies in the relationship between the interior and the exterior, the power to mould the vision of the landscape to one’s own taste, creating segments and framing the vision in a game of perspectives between the different spaces within the garden itself
“Passage garden evokes the Chinese perception of interiors projected onto exterior nature”. Considering nature from the interior, spatial issues require the building to provide us with another method of positioning ourselves to find the exact angle which allows us to look towards the exterior, as if we were using a lens”.
Michael Lin
