Chung Ying Hou｜侯忠穎 藝術 寫實繪畫 當代藝術
Botanical Thinking
2026 TAAC Artist Residency & Solo Exhibition, Governors Island, New York。
草木有思
Between paper, water and light: from microscopic paintings of the palm to a monumental fingerprint installation, an artistic turn from the landscape of the body toward environmental collaboration
Botanical Thinking continues Chung-Ying Hou’s long-standing exploration of the relationships between the hand, the body, and nature. Beginning with his earlier series Vision and Hand Landscape, Hou employed macro photography, photographic cropping, and realist painting to transform the textures, folds, and interplay of light and shadow on the hand into bodily landscapes reminiscent of mountains, valleys, and drifting mist. These works explore visual connections between fragments of the human body and the natural landscape, while establishing his ongoing inquiry into becoming and the interplay of the visible and the invisible (xu–shi). For Hou, images and spaces are never entirely fixed; they continually acquire new meanings through acts of seeing, perception, and the passage of time.
Fig. 1 Installation view of Botanical Thinking: Chung-Ying Hou Solo Exhibition, TAAC House 17, Governors Island, New York, 2026. Photography: Yi-Lun Lu
In the summer of 2026, Hou was invited to participate in an artist residency organized by the Taiwanese American Arts Council (TAAC) on Governors Island, New York, where he presented his solo exhibition Botanical Thinking at House 17. Over the course of nearly three months, this residency marked a shift in his artistic practice: from observing and representing nature toward exploring the interactions among materials, environments, and living beings. The island’s plants, soil, natural light, and changing weather were no longer merely subjects to be depicted, but became active participants in the formation of the works.
The exhibition brings together watercolor painting, handmade paper incorporating plant materials, and a large-scale spatial installation. Using grasses, leaves, plant pigments, and natural fibers collected on the island, Hou investigates the physical properties of natural materials and the processes through which forms emerge.
Fig. 2 Chung-Ying Hou, Botanical Thinking (detail), 2026, handmade paper, watercolor, ink, plant pigments, grass fibers, leaves, dimensions variable. Photography: Yi-Lun Lu
Paper and water are particularly significant in this inquiry. Paper originates from plants, yet carries human writing, images, and knowledge. Water is both an essential element of life and the fundamental medium of watercolor painting. As water penetrates the paper, pigments spread, settle, and accumulate along its fibers, allowing the material’s own behavior to become part of the creative process. Rather than imposing a predetermined image upon the materials, Hou explores the possibilities that emerge through the interplay of artistic intention, chance, and material response.
Fig. 3 Chung-Ying Hou making handmade paper in the TAAC residency studio on Governors Island. Photography: Yi-Lun Lu
Composed of 150 sheets of handmade paper, the installation brings together plant fibers, watercolor, natural pigments, and traces of the artist’s hand to form an enormous fingerprint suspended in space. Viewed up close, the work reveals the fibers, colors, and shifting effects of light across the paper. From a distance, these seemingly separate fragments gradually come together to reveal a unified image. This perceptual shift—from fragment to whole, from material to image—transforms the installation into an experience that continually unfolds through the viewer’s movement and changes in the surrounding environment.
Fig. 4 Installation view of Botanical Thinking: Chung-Ying Hou Solo Exhibition, TAAC House 17, Governors Island, New York, 2026.
This artistic practice also reflects Hou’s long-standing concern with “Boundary as Interface.” For him, a boundary is not simply a line of separation, but a site of encounter, exchange, and transformation. Skin defines the body, yet also enables touch and perception. Paper carries images, yet also allows plants, water, and human actions to converge. The relationships between body and nature, material and culture, fragment and whole are therefore not fixed oppositions, but dynamic and interdependent processes of becoming.
Botanical Thinking also draws upon the East Asian literati tradition of contemplating the natural world. It proposes a shift from “viewing things through the self” (yi wo guan wu) toward “viewing things on their own terms” (yi wu guan wu).
Fig. 5 The process of Chung-Ying Hou making handmade paper with locally sourced paper, grasses and leaves, TAAC Residency Studio, Governors Island, New York, 2026.
Rather than treating nature merely as a vessel for personal emotions, Hou uses material experimentation to attend to its processes of growth, change, and response. The word thinking in the exhibition title does not suggest that plants think in the same way humans do. Instead, it invites us to reconsider how life exists through relationships, responsiveness, and ongoing interactions with its environment.
From bodily landscapes to handmade paper incorporating plant materials, and from figurative representation to spatial installation, Botanical Thinking marks a significant development in Hou’s exploration of painting beyond its conventional boundaries, toward an expanded practice engaging with materials, place, and the relationships among living beings.
Fig.6- 8 Dancer Boyu Huang moving among the paper strips of Botanical Thinking during I do sounds, you do dance. Photography: Yi-Lun Lu
Rather than simply producing images of nature, the works allow natural processes to enter into painting itself, bringing the body, materials, time, and environment together in the formation of each work.
Here, art is not merely a way of seeing nature anew, but a means of recognizing that human beings have always existed within it—continually forming new relationships and meanings through encounters, exchanges, and transformations with the world.
Fig. 9 Chung-Ying Hou, series of works in watercolor, plants and handmade paper, 2026, installation view of Botanical Thinking. Photography: Yi-Lun Lu
Fig. 10 Chung-Ying Hou, A Garden Sheltered by Mist, 2026, watercolor, plants, handmade paper, 29.7 × 21.0 cm.