“A True Gem... Has a Magical Vitality”

“Marlene Tseng Yu has deftly avoided common pitfalls besetting many late-20th-century painters interested in natural beauty; she has managed to avoid the trite and tired, the conventional and formulaic depiction, and has stayed amazingly free of clichéd sentimentality. What she puts forth instead, is a thoroughly contemporary image of nature that combines painterly and graphic values with objective and fantastic overtures. That is to say, Tseng Yu has forged an original style that conveys the spirit of nature, by working on the borderline between representation and abstraction. With her background both in traditional brush painting and Minimalism, she has pushed the usual obstacles, separating Eastern and Western pictorial systems synthesizing the two in powerful and enchanting expressions far removed from the ravages of industrialization. Tseng Yu's mastery of acrylic - her method of applying it wet and thin - has allowed her to produce a repertory of dazzling effects combining the ephemeral intimacy of watercolor and the substantial quality and glow of oil. Drawing on her own experiences as well as her imagination, she captures the appearance of life beneath the sea with poetic delicacy. The vibrating quality of forms seen underwater is convincingly portrayed in Dancing Coral, 1991. A true gem, this composition, with its lacelike floating structures, shifting depth, and subtle colors enhanced by a shower of refracted light, has a magical vitality.”

Ronny Cohen, Ph.D. Quoted from ARTForum