ART Habens Art Review // Special Issue ART Habens Art Review - Special Issue #89 | Page 42

ART Habens
Tatawa (Wei Tan)
listen to. A good example is Björk,
which has the magma-‐like texture,
volcanic explosiveness, thread-‐like
intricacy, childlike directness, and
heartbreaking intensity which I deeply
resonate with and subconsciously
mimic in my artwork. My background in
classical piano and flamenco guitar
definitely play a part in my art as well. I
think this question is particularly
relevant to me as my work is about
exposing influences. I am almost
certain that about every gesture in my
paintings has been heavily influenced
by something else, and that true
originality is non-‐existent.
The idea of the real and imagined
comes up a lot in everything I do – my
writing, music and artwork. To me the
bottom line is that imagination is as
real as reality, or rather, a part of
reality. As the person behind the
imagination is a product of reality, no
imagination comes “out of the blue”
and is not a response to real, past
experience. My artwork demolishes this
boundary and the word I use (instead of
real and imagined) is “confessional”. I
draw from both everyday experience
and the inner self since both are the
same to me. I use the analogy of
“painting as making soup” because I
believe in the “soup-‐like” nature of
Special Issue
things – real and imagined, outer
experience and inner self etc., and
what I make is bound to contain a bit of
everything, since you can’t really
separate one ingredient from the other
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