CV

"Dreaming is awaking. Visualization uncovers vision.

Focusing on the intense yet vitalizedly balanced entanglement and coexistence between mechanical and living beings, Grace Tao’s artworks visualize the core of the dreaming mechanism that is not fake or illusional but just more real than “reality,” if we insist on this non-essential normalized delineation. A higher structural unification of dynamics, as the deepest reality veiled in the visual reality as a form of cognitive normalization, is marvellously visually represented through the distortion, abstraction, and innovative re-integration of real-life objects through Grace’s unique contradiction and dynamic harmonization framework.

Such a dream mechanism cannot work without proactive reversion of the presumed structure of gaze and objectification. The camera, as the instrument for gazing, becomes the gazed; the gears, as the channel of structured mechanical movements, are deprived of the structure from which they are entitled meaning. Then, at this very instant when the reality is stunned and visual normalization fades, when instrumentality is no longer valid, colours and plants – the disordered and the very soft – break in and build the dream vision. Thus, when the new rhythm of movements is re-introduced into vision, they are no longer instrumentalized and normalized but back into the very beginning moment when the impulse of moving and creating appears, and there are numerous forms of them waiting to be realized."

----- Chen Chen, an influential Art Critic @ Vancouver, Canada

 

 

Self Statement

I believe art is a method to express feeling. It is an echo between an artist and observers. The communication process is accomplished by art languages, such as colours, textures, compositions and elements.

Like many other artists, life is the biggest inspiration for my art. Moving to a new country to start a new life, growing a family, and working to make living, all of them made up what I want to paint.

Post-Impressionism and Byzantine are so far top 2 art genres influencing me. David Hockey is one of my favourite artists. They have been a constant source of inspiration to me.

I am always fascinated with mechanical gears, never get bored to look at them. Their structure and complexity remind me how I feel about life. The running gears is just like the ongoing life, uninterrupted with certain rules.  In 2024, I began to involve organic forms, like wood, flowers in to my paintings. The combination with mechanical elements takes my concept even deeper : real but not quite real, discipline and freedom, breaking perfection, mixing non-connections, harmony in contradiction.

 

Education:

Concordia University, BFA

Major: Painting & Drawing

 

Exhibition:

August 2024, "Dream Mechanism", Group Show

@ Lipont Gallery, Richmond, Vancouver, Canada