Mind Set Art Center Taipei presents “Woman, Scaffolding”, a solo show signed by the artist Ana Maria Micu. The exhibition includes paintings, drawings, a mural, a video and a hand-painted animation.
A reception was held on March 16, the day of the opening, followed by a guided tour made by the artist. Micu’s main exhibition runs concomitantly with “Seen as the Sea” by emerging Taiwanese artist Chuang Ho in the gallery’s Project Room and the display of “Capering Monkey”, Tang Jo-Hung’s latest painting, in the One-piece Room.

Micu says her show is about “a female character rising to reach a higher place from the murky, earthly, and vegetal depth of her bed.” The concept comes from a lingering memory of the artist, from having watched, many years ago, the movie “The Agony and the Ecstasy” (1965), particularly the scene in which Michelangelo struggles to paint, laid on his back, climbed on top of a wood scaffolding, and paints pour into his eyes. Micu connects this scene with a recent observation that the ceilings of her studio rooms are almost the only space she has at her disposal to which she has not yet assigned any utilitarian or artistic exploitation. Therefore, she made an animation of the process in which she stacks two pieces of furniture to climb up and paint on the ceiling.
Micu makes a conscious effort to observe her surroundings, dominated by the indoor plants that she grows, and to explore the interiority of her creative process. The exhibition is accompanied by “Disegno: Drafting on a Figure of Thought”, a dialogue essay between the artist and the art theoretician Vlad Ionescu, exploring the topic in depth. The text can read on Micu’s website.
The exhibition can be visited until April 27, 2024.
Address: Mind Set Art Center | 1F, No. 20, Wenhu St., Neihu Dist., Taipei City 114, Taiwan

Ana Maria Micu is a visual artist based in Botoșani, exclusively represented globally since 2018 by Mind Set Art Center, Taipei. She works primarily with painting, connecting two or more images regarding personal experience and her close environment in non-linear presentations of scenarios she identifies as minor acts of living. Micu graduated with an MFA from the University of Art and Design of Cluj-Napoca in Romania in 2004. In 2011, Micu’s works were at the Fourth Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art. Her 2020 painting, “Workers, will still be … to stay”, has been collected by the National Museum of Contemporary Art (MNAC) in Bucharest, Romania. In 2022, Micu held her solo exhibition “Left Hand to Distant View” at MNAC, and in 2021, she was included in the group exhibition “The Poetic Realm” at the Yu-Hsiu Museum of Art.
https://www.anamariamicu.com/
Vlad Ionescu is an associate professor in the history and theory of art and architecture at PXL MAD School of Arts/ Faculty of Architecture and Arts, Hasselt University, Belgium. Specialised initially in formalist aesthetics and art history (Riegl, Wölfflin, Worringer, etc.), he is currently working on the relationship between art and architecture. Besides co-editing and co-translating Jean-François Lyotard’s “Writings on Contemporary Art and Artists” (Leuven University Press, 7 volumes published between 2009-2013), he is the author of “Applied Arts, Implied Art. Craftsmanship and Technology in the Age of Art Industry” (A&S Books, 2016), “Pneumatology. An Inquiry into the Representation of Wind, Air, Breath” (ASP, 2017), “Waiting Rooms of Architecture”, with Malgorzata Maria Olchowaka (VAi, 2023), “Felix Aestheticus. Pour Herman Parret”, edited volume with Sémir Badir et Nathalie Kremers (Peeters, 2023), and many other essays on the topics mentioned above. In 2017, Vlad Ionescu was Laureate of the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Sciences and the Arts, Class of Arts/ Koninklijke Vlaamse Academie van België voor Wetenschappen en Kunsten/ Klasse Kunsten.
https://uhasselt.academia.edu/VladIonescu
Mind Set Art Center (MSAC) is a contemporary art platform founded in Taipei in 2010 that exhibits and promotes artworks by Taiwanese, Asian and international artists. It is dedicated to creative programs and collaborative projects with curators from different regions with the aim of cultural exchange. Since 2017, the gallery has successfully launched large-scale exhibits at Art Basel in Hong Kong that have garnered global acclaim. These include “A 100km Walk” by Shi Jin-Hua, “The Play of a Taiwan Ranger” by Lee Ming-tse, and “Liminal Air Space-Time” by Shinji Ohmaki. MSAC has also been working with the Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts since 2019 to widen the representation of its artists in academia. The collaboration has led to milestone exhibitions, including “Infinitrace” by Rao Fu, “Rustle of Existence” by Shinji Ohmaki and “Tide Table” by Marina Cruz.
MSAC currently works with more than 30 artists around the world. In 2023, the gallery exhibited Romanian artists Dragoș Bădiță, Ioan De Moisa, Dan Măciucă, and this year, Oana Fărcaș, Andreea Medar and Ana Maria Micu. It is preparing to participate in Art Brussels 2024 with Dani Ghercă and to mark the debut in Taiwan of Bogdan Vlăduță with an extensive solo show. Since the gallery was built, it has been active in publishing literature and completed nearly 40 publications, including exhibition catalogues and the artist albums of Shi Jin-Hua, Juin Shieh, Tang Jo-Hung, Shinji Ohmaki, Marina Cruz, and Ana Maria Micu.
https://www.art-msac.com/en/















