Tsai-Ling Tseng’s paintings have a magical ability to uncover truths swimming beneath human facades. The distorted facial expressions and uncanny body language of her characters remind me of how I feel internally in specific situations but never reveal on the outside. The paintings juxtapose the grotesque and gorgeous, capturing moments of embarrassment and enlightenment.
While surfing across Tseng’s paintings one night online while catching up on the New York City art scene, one piece in particular, Yellow Girl (2021), penetrated my core. A smiley-faced figure seated on a bed and partly bathed in yellow light melts to reveal a form composed of blood red. Is this figure awakening or preparing for sleep? Is anger boiling inside this body, or is it relieved to take off its suffocating skin?
After reaching out to Tseng to express my admiration, we bonded over a similar sense of humor and shared experiences, both past and present, as Taiwanese aliens working in a foreign creative landscape.
Chia-Lun Chang: I often see characters in your paintings. Who are these people? What do they mean to you?
Tsai-Ling Tseng: Most of them are self-portraits as well as family members and close friends. There are imaginative characters too.
CC: Your paintings are full of characters with unusual and strong facial expressions or postures. What do you think about the idea of beauty? Are you exploring beauty aesthetics, and how do you interpret it within your work?
TT: The facial expressions usually come out unplanned. There is a sense of freedom and freshness that enters the painting process when I let go of preconceived notions about how a figure should look. This allows me to see things abstractly and respond intuitively to what the painting needs. Usually, it means scraping off the paints that I don’t feel are right, using larger brushes to move paints around, and taking more risk to make the figures feel like they are part of a painting rather than a thing on top of many things. These deconstructions allow me to expand my awareness to respond to what the painting is asking me to do at the moment instead of fixing tiny parts to make a cohesive imagery. Sometimes these impulsive actions might ruin a painting; other times, they work. When they work, the paintings don’t always look pretty, but they feel authentic to me. It goes back to your question about my idea of beauty. I think beauty has more to do with being true to what the painting needs at the moment than being pretty.
CC: To me, it sounds like you’re a conduit for your paintings. How do you enter the space outside of yourself and into the painting’s needs?
TT: I believe that there is magic in painting. When I am in the zone painting, which doesn’t happen all the time, but when it happens it feels like I am watching something take place rather than me trying to make things work. There is a quote I always like by Philip Guston about what he called “studio ghosts”: “When you’re in the studio painting, there are a lot of people in there with you—your teachers, friends, painters from history, critics . . . and one by one if you’re really painting, they walk out. And if you’re really painting you walk out.”
Tsai-Ling Tseng, Lunar New Years, 2014, oil on canvas, 48 × 60 inches. Photo by Haoyan of America. Courtesy of Goldfinch.
CC: So whatever you plan for the painting, the outcome would be completely different, right? Can you share any unexpected results that almost surprised you?
TT: I don’t usually have a predetermined plan when I start to paint. But I do have ideas about what I would want to try in the beginning of a painting. And, yes, when I start to paint for a while, these ideas often evolve into something unexpected. In Lunar New Years (2024), I initially wanted to make a painting about feelings of isolation from my family because they live in Taipei, and I am in New York. So, I began with a full figure of my mother in the middle of the canvas, along with my siblings, my dad, and the outlook of our old house. I liked how it looked for a while, and I continued working on it. However, at some point, I started to lose engagement with the painting and felt like I was finishing up an assignment rather than creating something in my studio because the imagery was louder than the paints.
Then, one day an impulsive urge came over me. I had to let go of the things that no longer worked on the picture plane and follow what was actually happening on the canvas. What interested me the most when I removed my mom’s portrait was the light: the left side was darker, while the right side was brighter. I retained the figure on the left from the previous layer of painting, which is a self-portrait drawing on a desk, and she seemed to be looking at the right side. As I painted, I thought about what I was looking at when I drew, and I found a ridiculously happy me holding the red envelope. Then things started to happen when I realized that it’s a painting of me reminiscing about my last Lunar New Year’s memory at home.
CC: Is there always a narrative in your paintings? Are you loosely creating a story?
TT: How I connect with paint is by bringing out stories from memories and imagination. So, yes, there are narratives, but they are more embedded within the painting process. I am more interested in sharing the painting process, which has to do with decision-making, world-building, finding places, and connecting them within the painting world. Storytelling is one of the elements that emerges from the process of painting.
CC: It seems like you are using painting to have a conversation with yourself.
TT: It’s like a conversation with myself being recorded on the canvas by paints.
Tsai-Ling Tseng, 23 (11–1) and 782, 2024, oil on canvas, 36 × 48 inches. Photo by Haoyan of America. Courtesy of Goldfinch.
CC: You mentioned that you’re trying to get some truth out through the process of art-making. Why is truth important to you?
TT: I don’t think I consciously try to uncover truth through the process of art-making; it’s more like a byproduct that eventually shows up if I am in the zone painting. When my hand moves a little faster than my mind, sometimes certain images or compositions—which evolve into narratives that I recognize as memories I didn’t feel comfortable confronting—start to dominate the canvas. They just happen to be there for me to deal with them whether I like it or not. It’s not the most comfortable thing, but it does make me feel closer to who I am as a person.
CC: Does the education system in Taiwan have significant influence on your creative practice?
TT: I didn’t have many chances to be exposed to art when I was in Taiwan. I focused more on studying math and physics, like most Taiwanese kids around me at the time. It wasn’t until later, when I went to the US for college, that I found myself falling in love with painting. Eventually, I made the decision to pursue art.
CC: Can you share some artists you like lately?
TT: I look at Paul Cézanne’s Mont Sainte-Victoire series and Andrea Mantegna’s and Piero della Francesca’s compositions. I think a lot lately about the time difference and mark-making cohesiveness between Frank Auerbach and Luc Tuymans.
Tsai-Ling Tseng, The delayed farewell (A-Gong and Ruby), 2024, oil on canvas, 50 × 55 inches. Photo by Haoyan of America. Courtesy of Goldfinch.
CC: How would you describe the paintings in your current show at Goldfinch in Chicago?
TT: The body of work at Goldfinch is a continuation of my previous exhibition with OTP Copenhagen gallery. When I work toward a show, I often carry forward questions or ideas that I found interesting from previous bodies of work. For the last show, I worked on smaller canvases, twenty-four-by-thirty inches or smaller, which allowed me to experiment with less pressure for the practical reason that if a smaller work doesn’t work out I could simply put it aside and revisit it later if I wanted to. I’ve found this to be a healthy studio practice that I’ve continued with this newer body of work. It’s allowed me to be bolder with compositions by trying different arrangements and connections within the painting, which keeps the studio practice exciting for me. When I worked on smaller paintings, I missed the physical engagement that comes with larger canvases. With a larger canvas, I can use my whole arm to move paint around, and I become more immersed in the painting process. Stepping back from the canvas, I can find more mark-making, which in turn opens up the imagery to the surroundings more in the current works, such as A delayed farewell (A-Gong and Ruby) (2024).
Tsai-Ling Tseng: Piece together (times) is on view at Goldfinch in Chicago until June 8.
