Page 83 - 第22屆大墩美展專輯電子書

Juror’s Statement, Seal Engraving Category

CHENG Tai-Le

The first Da Dun Fine Arts Exhibition of Taichung City was The other Award of Merit winner, CHEN Yi-Ching, has won
held in 1996 and later became Taiwan's most important government- many awards in past competitions and is very comfortable with
organized major art exhibition after the discontinuation of the the narrow Zhu script. However, under the shadow of legendary
National Art Exhibition and Provincial Art Exhibition. Although seal engraver CHEN Ju-Lai, she may need to seek more creative
the National Art Exhibition recently restarted, the Da Dun Fine Arts interpretations or presentation methods to achieve better results.
Exhibition of Taichung City still maintains its significance, especially
Overall, this year's submissions all display a certain level of
for international artists, as it is one of Taiwan's few international art
quality in terms of basic carving skills and techniques and we see
exhibitions. It is also an important event for seal engravers as seal
more young engravers emerging, thanks to the promotion of this art
engraving is among its competition categories.
form in recent years. But there are some concerns related to the style
The winners of this year's seal engraving category were selected of the entries, as follows.
by five jurors during four rounds of voting. We can say the final
1) An intricate and neat form has become common and most of the
decisions were unanimous since most of the submissions were from
entries display a very similar style. Some may try to mimic the
recent rising stars in the field who have already won many awards in
manner of the masters, yet fail to produce a unified style among
various seal engraving competitions.
their own works.
The First Prize winner this year is LIU Kuang-Yi, who received
2) Regarding a balance between creativity and a desire to win, the
permanent qualification status at the National Art Exhibition. His
participants leaned too much towards the latter and tried too hard
strong carving skills, together with solid seal design composition,
to impress the jurors. Consequently, there were not many new and
reflect the co-existence of reality and fantasy and feature ingenious
creative breakthroughs.
touches in the details.
3) Engravers can work towards infusing their artworks with the
Second Prize winner TU Chi-Tung was also a Silver Prize
personal thoughts or reading experiences.
winner at this year's National Art Exhibition. His carving skills and
seal composition display inspiration and styles from recent masters' Due to the above-mentioned issues, I suggest that the organizer
works. While the pieces show that the engraver is capable of both neat decrease the required number of submitted seals to no more than six.
and wild presentations, his style is unfortunately not unified. This would make it easier for the jurors to accurately judge an artist's
presentation and style, and participants would have to submit their
Third Prize winner LO Ying-Liang was also the Bronze Prize
latest works to convince jurors. After all, quality is more important
winner at this year's National Art Exhibition. He has a very strong,
than quantity.
tight carving style and employed Jin and Zhongshan scripts. The
inscriptions are quite good, although the style is not unified. I hope that seal engraving will continue to flourish and develop
in Taiwan, and that all engravers will eventually discover their own
Award of Merit winner FANG Li-Chuan's entries are mainly
artistic styles.
done in Jin script. If he can learn to infuse his seals with his personal
calligraphy-writing skills, the results may be even better.

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