Taiwan Buffalo

The bas-relief? "Taiwan Buffalo"?strikes a precise balance between flatness and three-dimensionality, using a combination of rounded and sharp crosscutting angles to project images. Light and shadow contrasts produce a layering effect, as if the images are overlapped, creating a sense of distance and depth. Shallow sculpting techniques bring out a variety of surface textures—concavity/convexity, firmness/roundness, thinness/thickness—endowing humans and animals with eyesight and mass, seemingly living, breathing beings with blood coursing through muscle and bone. The images of three young cowherds and five water buffalo harmonize with clumps of wild grass below and alternately hidden and visible banana leaves above, imbuing the work with a sense of rhythm and flow, evoking the youths' tender feelings for their bovine charges. The meticulous rendering and elegant composition recreate the bucolic ambience and exuberant vitality of the Taiwanese countryside in an earlier era. When NTMoFA opened its doors in 1988, it received a bronze reproduction of "Taiwan Buffalo," a representative work in the museum's collection.