8.8.64. (Painting Relief)

8.8.64 (Painting Relief) is one of the finest works of this period in the 1960s, where Lin refined his celebrated structured minimalist style. Painted almost exclusively in white except for the inclusion of a black rectangular relief element in the central left of the composition Lin succeeds in creating a serene yet visceral surface. The juxtaposition of black and white is not only visually striking, but is symptomatic of the 1960s, with artists such as Victor Vasarely and Bridget Riley’s exploration into the effects of Op Art, as seen in her seminal work Shift, 1963. Through the inclusion of relief elements and his carefully calculated use of line and form, Lin bridges the gap between painting, sculpture and architecture and draws the viewers attention to the materiality of the work. This newfound focus on the physical process of a work and the conveyance of a work as a ‘pure object’ rather than a ‘pure picture’ was synonymous with other artists’ practice of the time, such as Victor Pasmore, Agnes Martin, Anthony Hill and Kenneth Martin. After the 1951 Festival of Britain exhibition a new minimalist, constructed abstract art aesthetic developed, with artists such as Kenneth Martin using the term ‘Constructionist’, which derived from the American relief artist and theorist Charles Biederman, who had coined the term to distinguish his art from the Russian Constructivists, while others were labelled as British Constructivists or Minamilists. Although these artists had differing aesthetics and goals they sought to expose the process of a work and focus on the present rather than the idioms of the past. Victor Pasmore discussed this new abstraction:

“Because it functions freely and objectively in terms of its own palpable form, an abstract work ultimately demands, for its full realisation the whole gamut of physical dimension. Furthermore, in so far as the process of human perception operates as a three-dimensional experience, it will demand from a work of visual art a similar condition of physical form. This means that the purely abstract artist will be frustrated in his urge for complete development so long as he confines himself to the surface bound medium of painting alone” ( quoted in J. Reichardt, Victor Pasmore, London, 1962).

Born in Formosa, Taiwan, Lin was educated in the UK first at Millfield School in Somerset and then went on to study architecture at Regent St Polytechnic in the 1950s, the influence of which can be seen in the present work with his use of plastic and metal. He held his first solo exhibition in 1959 at Gimpel Fils in London and from the 1960s and 1970s he participated in some of the most pioneering exhibitions in Europe, such as Documenta III in Kassel, Germany, in 1964, which marked a turning point for minimal art in Europe. Lin’s art merged his Eastern background with Western vanguard movements, drawing not only on American Minimalism and the work of artists such as Donald Judd but also Chinese, Taiwanese ink drawings, making him a truly unique artist.