 ince the rise of conceptual art in Europe and America in the middle 1960s, contemporary art’s tolerance and coverage have been greatly expanded. The aesthetic tradition of previous arts seems to have been overthrown; artists’ own behavior and art creation process have become the subject and content of art works. In an age when everything can be made into art works, it’s good there’s always someone who can produce works beyond your expectations, no matter whether he has turned wholly competent after years of struggle or has just made his debut with a showy trick. However, to prove oneself a genuine artist in this great art wave, one has to rely upon his original impulse in heart.
 Then, when I saw Mr. Marvin Mintofang’s “Revival” series, the innate feel of life in it convinced me immediately that it’s what I would like to see. Artist Marvin Mintofang, born in Taipei in 1955, specialized in indoor design in California of the United States in his early years. After earning his bachelor degree, he had grown discontented with design’s purposefulness and currency; after all, the design profession in a business atmosphere should still be targeted at the needs of clients.
Then Mr. Marvin Mintofang went on to pursue a master degree in environmental art design at the California State University in Los Angeles and a master degree in art at California Otis College of Art and Design. The desire to self-command artist’s own conception and behavior has eventually turned him into a professional artist. Since the days when he studied environmental design, he had shown “interest in space”, and symptoms of his early rigorous training in  design can still be seen in his works. His understanding and clean sectioning of two-dimensional and three-dimensional spaces are very characteristic of modern design style.
What interests me most, however, is nature’s life trace always betrayed in Mr. Fangjiang’s works. His earliest series of works are always related to grass growing. “I’ve grown grass at many places, and I’ve grown it in a Biennale; but I began with growing grass everywhere in a parking lot outside an art museum.” He has used the return of space originally belonging to life to set free men’s innermost primitive feelings towards green plants. Our living space has been invaded and occupied by too many non-life supplements, so Mr. Fangjiang has changed the parking lot into a green plot and replaced the staircase at the entrance of the art museum with a green space. Now, this idea can be regarded as very environmentally protective, but I don’t believe the artist started with a clearer idea of environment protection – he intended only to magnify to us the life experience of the green grass we always neglected. “Artists have great powers,” they can arbitrarily combine and restructure his own and others’ experiences for viewers to experience. Mr. Marvin Mintofang also said he had once created some installation works, such as a foot or a human head covered with growing green grass. “Usually grass is tramped under man’s feet, now I want to see what it would be like when grass treads on your foot or grows on your head.” Life shouldn’t be classed into noble or abject, but such a common- idea is by no means deeply rooted in men’s hearts.
 Mr. Marvin Mintofang’s early works were dominated by pottery art works and some marble sculptural works, and in the well-known Hollywood love classic “Ghost,” when the hero and heroine were molding the earthen base, the work behind them was the very masterpiece by Mr. Marvin Mintofang. In 1999, Mr. Marvin Mintofang came to Guilin in mainland China and became the chief art inspector of Yuzi Paradise, which is a matchless theme park in China featuring international spatial sculptures. In the about 132 acres of park region gather numerous sculptural works by artists from all around the world; naturally he has his own work there – forming a ring are several huge Chinese-style porcelain ladles in which he has grown green Chinese onions, coinciding with his green grass series. It is set against the vast Guilin landscape, becoming a more integral part of the scenery. However, Mr. Marvin Mintofang’s major work at that time was planning, contacting artists, and designing the interiors, exteriors and surroundings of the hotel in the park. So, the hotel in Yuzi Paradise has now been ranked among the four top superb hotels in China. In 2003, Mr. Marvin Mintofang came to Beijing, the center of Chinese modern and contemporary art. Just as Ms. Lu Rongzhi, a distinguished curator, says, Mr. Marvin Mintofang“is one of the earliest artists in Taiwan to try cross-domains and transforming from a single art domain to conceptual arts”. He also took part in the first Moon River Sculpture Art Festival. Perhaps because of the experience in Guilin, he has come closer to spaces of nature, has begun to entertain more open art ideas, and has had deeper interactions with space.
This time I had also opportunity to visit Mr. Marvin Mintofang’s studio in Beijing, where his “Revival” series he was currently working at is kept. This was a series of works I felt unique; some were woodcut works, with forms of potted trees carved out of wood piles, and out of the integral pots grow well-proportioned twist and stretched branches, without least sign of leaves. “I’d thought for two years of the ways to bring dead wood to life and finally decided that to cut them into tree forms was the best way.” This set of carvings bring people peculiar feels – consciously you know they’re long dead wood but they acquire the shape and structure of trees, then you’re put in the conversion between concepts of wood and tree but can hardly alight on either concept.  I asked which stuff they were carved out of and he said they’re camphor-wood much abundant in the South, because camphor-wood was soft and resilient in quality, suitable for knife cutting, unlike pine and cypress that grow rigid straight textures and break easily when cut. By breathing his unique touch of design into these works, Mr. Marvin Mintofang had arranged the branch runs of each tree differently, and each has well-spaced branches. He said he would plan branch design as closer as possible to the section texture of the coming wood piles. He had also created some unusual works, such as a root system growing out of the bottom of a pot, or a tree has a human-shape trunk and branches growing out of the round head. All these were Artist’s attempts guided by the same idea, and such explorations and extensions were also common techniques professional artists adopted. Meanwhile I also saw his oil painting works of the same series, which had the same clean style, though, the quality of colors, the suppression of branches on space, after being represented in two-dimensional space, are all distinct from the three-dimensional carvings, being very characteristic of modern design style. Mr. Marvin Mintofang, currently busy with preparations for his own solo exhibition in Beijing next January, showed distinctive good interest in this series he had begun since 2006; there were in his studio still some small woodcut drawers, whose handles turned out to be carved small trees. “The material quality of wood fits the rapid release of my inspirations”, and the natural charm from the fine carving carry a good touch of antiquities. According to Mr. Marvin Mintofang, some of these works have been collected by Cincinnati Art Museum and other world-renowned art museums.
 Here’s another thing worth mentioning: in a house beside the studio, Mr. Marvin Mintofang’s three assistants were busy with carving of camphor-wood. They’re all woodcut craftsmen from Anhui province, who once produced woodcarvings for temples before. Mr. Marvin Mintofang had hired these superbly skillful craftsmen and left the remaining carving work to them after he himself had drawn lines on the wood. This might well be regarded as a preservation and reuse of traditional handicraft. “I’ve been persuading their children to carry on this handicraft,” said Mr. Marvin Mintofang. That Chinese good handicraft tradition can play a part in contemporary art is a good thing on any account.
In what may be seen as grotesque and diversified modern and contemporary art, Mr. Marvin Mintofang’s works can be said to have acquired a transcending appeal. Having seen too much political pop and popular art, one couldn’t help developing a fond feeling for the simple art. Even if there’s no critical fever in his works, we wouldn’t have to impose upon Artist the idea of environmental protection or other extrinsic ideas. With a fairly tolerant understanding of contemporary art, Mr. Marvin Mintofang believes all approaches worth a try. Kandinsky once described in The Soul in Art that “Only when (a painter) paints some flat ‘unusual works’ could he be talked of by people. Because of this ‘unusual work’, a small band of reputable art benefactors and pundits could rely good hopes upon him (then huge material profits would soon come to him!); then huge armies of seemingly talented wily men would plunge themselves into the seemingly easy-to-grasp art. There are countless such artists in every ‘art center,’ and most of them are crazing for new styles; they’re apathetically, cold-heartedly and soullessly producing countless art works.” In my belief, nature and life are still an effective dose of sobriety for Chinese art, and Chinese art needs such a reviving force.
Translated by Hu Zhu
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