The Flower That Can Drive You Crazy 瘋人花
• 2026, 青青藝廊 Chin Chin Gallery, Tainan, Taiwan
• Through flowers & tea, tiles & pots, all on an intimate scale, The Flower That Can Drive You Crazy 瘋人花 represents water flow on the grand scale of Taiwanese landscape from mountains to valleys to shoreline to the ocean, then back again through clouds. Across these places are the architectural interventions of culture, which ravage nature & are themselves ravaged by nature, eventually.
In Taiwan’s wet mountainous landscape, flows merge from tropical forest springs to mountain orchards to urban canals to delta farming to the Taiwan Strait. Architectural ceramics, mostly local red brick, direct the flow, submit to it, then like stubborn refractory re-emerge to maintain that flow. Rem Koolhaas says that what matter in architecture are the exits & entrances. This ranges from the large scale of a harbor to the small scale of a tea service. Arguably the world’s most common product that shows the commonality of nature & culture, tea provides us a place to make everyday life extraordinary, to live up close in the charm of ceramics.
Artist residency at NTUE (National Taipei University of Education), Department of Art and Design during 2025 and 2026 made possible this exhibition. The residency was an opportunity to combine French marbled ceramics with Taiwanese tea ware. Artworks produced at residencies at Qing Yao, Miaoli with wood firing & Cloud Forest Ceramics, Yangmingshan with soda firing are also included in this exhibition.
A quick walk-through without audio:
The Flower That Can Drive You Crazy ChinChin Gallery brochure
https://brianmolanphy.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/The-Flower-That-Can-Drive-You-Crazy-ChinChin-Gallery-brochure.pdf