Greeting Monet: KO Si-Chi Solo Exhibition

Greeting Monet “My garden is my most beautiful masterpiece” once said Claude Monet, the key figure in French Impressionist movement. Having the same feelings and affection, Ko Si-Chi began his yearly photography project throughout year 2011 in Taijiang National Park, the 8th National Park in Taiwan. Being captivated by the beauty of nature motivates Ko to keep translating what he had seen through the lens of his camera, rendering the minimalist images in his very own aesthetics. His attachment with homeland Taiwan has granted him much delicate observation and sensitivity to capture the spirit and essence in local cultural landscape, and thus putting many authentic and moving stories into writing. Through his artistic photographic eye, the liveliness and uniqueness of Taiwan unfolds. Garden of Eden Like every artist does, Ko started his lessons of exploration in body and figure through working with the first life model in Taiwan, Lin Ssu-Tuan, and from then to the dancers and fashion models in the US. Spanning from fashion photography to those of pure aesthetics, there were the beautiful figures of nude dancers dancing, or poetic photos of nude figures in nature. In year 2011, Ko Si-chi, 82, had completed his collection titled Eden in Australia, illustrating nude bodies of families or lovers in nature. This shooting experience had let him realized that “There are different beauties in human body. The contours and figures of a mother represent a different stage in life, which is also beauty of a kind, and these are what I wanted to shoot now. Being able to acknowledge and appreciate different beauties in life opens us up.” The Classic: Dye Transfer This compilation presented Ko’s most celebrated dye transfer works since the 80s. His exceptional works of dye transfer technique were great achievements in the color photography. The Cercle d’Art’s photographic album Ko Si-chi paid tribute to Ko commenting that “Back in the 80s, when western professional photographers were still discussing about the artistry in black-and-white photography, Ko had already proven the advent of an era of color photography.” In 1994, New York’s Hammer Gallery had held its first ever photography exhibition, featuring Ko’s dye transfer collections. Year 1996 in Long Island, Lizan-Tops Gallery had put up the “Masters of Color Photography” exhibition, where Ko was juxtaposed with famous American photographers Burt Glinn, Ernst Haas, Pete Turner, and Barbara Wrubel.