Asia Art Center’s collaboration with Kuo Yen Fu began through a gradual process of mutual understanding and organic development. Over the years, we have continued to follow his practice and the way he has steadily built a distinct painterly language within the world of sport and competition. Cramps marks his first solo exhibition at Asia Art Center, as well as a significant moment in his artistic trajectory. Over the past decade, his work has turned increasingly inward, transforming outward scenes of movement into a deeper inquiry into bodily perception and the experience of time.
In this exhibition, sport is no longer simply a subject to be depicted, but a way of perceiving the world. Speed, rhythm, and tension become the underlying grammar of the image, structuring the momentum of the brushstroke and the composition itself. The body is no longer merely a vehicle for action, but also a means of measuring time. As the body approaches its limits through cramping, imbalance, and brief moments of suspension, time is stretched, compressed, and made to fold back upon itself. This shifting between movement and stillness shapes the central sensibility of the exhibition, transforming competitive experience into a metaphor for contemporary pressure and the condition of the individual.
While sport, running, and competition have remained central to Kuo’s practice in recent years, this exhibition marks a more inward turn. The paintings do not simply focus on figures in motion, but return to the body itself: the weight it bears, its inner rhythms, and the ways it adjusts within a fast-moving environment. This process of internalization reflects not only the accumulation of artistic method, but also a growing maturity of mind.
In addition to the exhibited works and installation views, this publication also includes an essay by writer Tsai Shih-ping, Commissioner of Taipei’s Department of Cultural Affairs, as well as Kuo’s own writing and images from everyday life, allowing readers to enter his practice from multiple perspectives and to sense an extended layering of time. Through these materials, we may come closer to the feeling that repeatedly emerges between running and pause, and begin to understand how, through sport, he searches for a way to remain in dialogue with himself.