I. Where Light Remains: A New Generation of Italian Painters(Taipei, 2025)

Venue: Shung Ye Museum of Formosan Fine Arts, Taipei
Year: 2025
Curator: Xuanhan Lin (Metra Lin)

Exhibition Background
This exhibition originated from my long-term curatorial collaboration with Cen Long and my ongoing reflection on the question of “artistic endurance.” Over the years, Cen Long’s paintings have consistently moved viewers through their inner spirituality and temporal depth, demonstrating that truly powerful painting does not rely on fashionable language, but on a stable and profound inner structure. During my curatorial work in Italy, I gradually realized that many young painters were seeking a similar path: they no longer pursue the visual spectacle or conceptual strategies often favored in contemporary art, but instead return to painting itself, attempting to rethink the weight of existence through light, silence, and everyday experience.

As a curator who has long worked between Europe and Asia, I hope to take Cen Long’s art as a spiritual point of reference, allowing this new generation of Italian painters to be reconsidered within the Taiwanese context. At the same time, I wish to help Taiwanese audiences understand that the true value of painting lies not in novelty, but in its capacity to continue speaking across time.

My Curatorial Motivation
The core motivation behind curating Where Light Remains is to ask a seemingly simple yet profound question: in our time, what can “light” in painting still leave behind? To me, light is not merely a visual effect, but a spiritual structure. The works of these young Italian painters are not representational depictions of light and shadow, but slow crystallizations of time, memory, and emotion. Through this exhibition, I hope to present a mode of painting distinct from mainstream contemporary aesthetics—one that is neither loud nor aggressive, yet capable of leaving a lasting echo in the viewer’s mind.

Curatorial Concept and Spatial Arrangement
I structured the exhibition around “the experience of light” as its overarching narrative axis, designing a slowly unfolding visual path through which viewers can gradually enter different layers of luminous perception:

• Some works present a quiet light reminiscent of early morning;

• Others point toward an almost religious inner illumination;

• Still others transform ordinary objects into presences with spiritual weight.
  
  

  I hope that as viewers move through the space, they will sense a rhythm—as if gradually traveling from the light of the outer world toward the light of the inner world.
  
  

Significance for My Research
This exhibition served as an important experimental field for testing the question that has long concerned me: can painting still carry deep spiritual and temporal dimensions in contemporary society? Through this curatorial project, I further confirmed that paintings with true enduring power are often not the newest, but those that continue to shine quietly in silence.

II. Sowing Hope: Followers of Light–Cen Long (Bologna, 2024–2025)

Venue: Palazzo Cavazza Isolani, Bologna
Year: 2024–2025
Curator: Xuanhan Lin (Metra Lin)

Exhibition Background
Sowing Hope is an important milestone in my long-term collaboration with Cen Long and a key stage in his curatorial trajectory in Italy. For many years, I have worked to position his art within the European context with greater historical depth. The Bologna exhibition is a natural continuation of these efforts.

My Curatorial Motivation
I hoped that within Bologna—a city rich in humanistic tradition—Cen Long’s works would no longer be reduced to geographic labels, but instead be understood as an artistic language of universal human value.

Curatorial Concept and Spatial Arrangement
I conceived the exhibition space as a regulator of viewing rhythm rather than a mere display container. The historical atmosphere of Palazzo Cavazza Isolani amplified the quiet yet persistent spiritual power characteristic of Cen Long’s paintings.

Significance for My Research
This exhibition allowed me to understand more clearly that artistic endurance does not arise solely from the artwork itself, but also from the combined operation of exhibition context, critical discourse, and cultural memory.

III. Sowing Hope: Cen Long (Venice, 2024)

Venue: Palazzo Querini, Venice
Year: 2024
Curator: Xuanhan Lin (Metra Lin)

Exhibition Background
Sowing Hope – Venice was one of the core exhibitions in Cen Long’s Italian tour and an important milestone in my long-term effort to bring his art into the European cultural context. Venice, as a symbolic city of European art history, provided an ideal site for deeper historical dialogue.

My Curatorial Motivation
I sought to create more appropriate conditions for viewing Cen Long’s art—conditions that require time, silence, and historical depth. Through this exhibition, I aimed to help viewers rediscover painting as a space for spiritual repose and memory.

Curatorial Concept and Spatial Arrangement
The exhibition was structured as a seven-chapter viewing path:
Ocean, Hope, The Lost Lamb, Purgatory, Creature, My Father, Marco Polo.
Beginning with Ocean, echoing Venice’s maritime culture, the exhibition gradually moved toward more internal emotional and spiritual dimensions before returning to a broader vision of life.

Cross-Cultural Dialogue
Venice attracts audiences from all over the world. In such a highly international context, Cen Long’s works transcend cultural boundaries and are understood directly through emotion and experience.

Significance for My Research
This exhibition provided a truly global setting in which I could observe the real operation of artistic endurance across cultures.