Getting in, Getting out in《Art Asia Pacific》(p.67-68) SEP/OCT 2016 

Lin Yi-Wei's paintings present themselves through a woozy color palette, at once muted and with bold, bright tones. It is hard to tell if the scenes depicted take place at night, day or the moments in between. While discernable figures often catch the eye, the backgrounds veer into abstractions constructed from loose, curved brushstrokes. It is no surprise then that the 28-year-old Taiwanese artist states his interest in experiences of ambiguity and uncertainty.

For his show "Riverlike Narrative," which opened at Taipei's Michael Ku Gallery in May, Lin partially took inspiration from novelist Yu Lihua's Palms Again (1967), in which a Taiwanese professor returns home from America and finds himself estranged from his ostensibly familiar surroundings. Lin's previous job at Taiwan's National Immigration Agency also fueled his work, prompting him to reflect on the figure of the immigrant, not in terms of specific journeys, but what it means to stand between spaces, alienated. Reflecting on his own position living alone in Taipei, Lin painted scenes he encountered as he went running after work. His imagery features stray dogs by the riverside, or the familiar glowing outline of a convenience store marquee, offset with dark fields of color or rough sketches along the edges.
Lin also contextualizes his paintings with sparse installations. The lacquer-covered leaves of Palms (2016) hark back to Yu's novel, where the specific species of tree is actually a Japanese colonial import-another immigrant.

The illuminated path down the center of Track (2016), a curved wooden ramp that reaches almost waist high, speaks to Lin's interest in visually representing narrative. For "Minsheng Village and People's Livelihood Village," a project staged at Taipei Fine Arts Museum in 2013, paintings depicting a village and its waterways were approached via rough-hewn concrete stairs. Bringing the physical environment into the gallery space, the steps further underscored Lin's fascination with symbolic pathways.
Set to graduate soon from Taipei National University of the Arts' MFA program, Lin admits he's still pondering the shape of his next work.
However, he is excited for an upcoming stay in Germany-perhaps another opportunity for the artist to observe society as an outsider with a discerning eye for atmosphere and history.