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Spanish Artist-in-Residence Manuel Barbero’s Solo Exhibition “Drifting Across Oceans” Now on View at NCKU Art Center
The Art Center of National Cheng Kung University (NCKU) has invited Spanish artist-in-residence Manuel Barbero to present his solo exhibition "Drifting Across Oceans" at the NCKU Art Space from now until June 6. Featuring dozens of works created with imagery such as fish, branches, caged birds, stars, and maps, the exhibition aims to lead audiences into a world where absurdity becomes reasonable and the ordinary becomes unexpected, while evoking the oceanic impressions the artist experienced during his walks through the NCKU campus, Tainan’s alleyways, and Yuguang Island in Anping.
Artist-in-residence Manuel Barbero is a professor of painting and printmaking at the prestigious Faculty of Fine Arts of Complutense University of Madrid in Spain. With nearly 30 years of teaching experience, he is both a dedicated educator and a prolific artist who continues to actively create and exhibit his work. Invited by the NCKU Art Center this April, he came to Tainan for a two-and-a-half-month artist residency program. During his residency, he has not only hosted visual art workshops centered on cyanotype techniques, but will also share his artistic journey and perspectives at the “HELLO ART” lecture series on May 27.
“Observation itself becomes intervention. The foreigner is me, I am you, you are her. We who drift across oceans all find ourselves anchored within a vast sea.” Curator Dr. Chih-Yin Lee explained that "Drifting Across Oceans" introduces audiences to a world where absurdity becomes logical and the ordinary turns unexpectedly unfamiliar, allowing viewers to immerse themselves in a playful interpretive space. Through the artworks, material images perceived by the human mind are brought into reality: chairs dragging fish, writhing potting soil, and everyday materials such as branches, trunks, digital prints, photocopies, cyanotype prints, wooden strips, ropes, nails, cardboard, and aluminum packaging are transformed into hand-drawn paintings, hundreds of blue fish, intertwined branches, and objects of varying sizes, each embodying transformation and change.
Professor Min-Yuan Ma, Director of the Art Center and professor in the Department of Industrial Design at NCKU, remarked that Barbero’s works resemble the creations of a large family. Through hand-drawn paintings, hundreds of blue fish, branches, and various objects, the artist presents imaginative works characterized by movement and transformation. After leaving the exhibition, viewers may suddenly notice ordinary objects around them differently, realizing they had just encountered those familiar items reimagined within the artworks. In addition to site-specific works created at NCKU, many of the exhibited pieces were brought from Spain by the artist and his wife, making the exhibition especially worth visiting.
Manuel Barbero shared that the materials used in the exhibition were collected during his walks around the NCKU campus, Tainan’s alleyways, and Yuguang Island in Anping, before being recombined into new creations. He expressed gratitude to the Art Center team, whom he described as magicians, for helping successfully present the exhibition to the public. In his view, when the contents of a single suitcase can be transformed into an exhibition, magic is not merely illusion, but rather the expression of ideas and techniques. In addition to the exhibition, he will also teach cyanotype-based visual workshops and warmly welcomes everyone to participate.
Artist-in-residence Manuel Barbero is a professor of painting and printmaking at the prestigious Faculty of Fine Arts of Complutense University of Madrid in Spain. With nearly 30 years of teaching experience, he is both a dedicated educator and a prolific artist who continues to actively create and exhibit his work. Invited by the NCKU Art Center this April, he came to Tainan for a two-and-a-half-month artist residency program. During his residency, he has not only hosted visual art workshops centered on cyanotype techniques, but will also share his artistic journey and perspectives at the “HELLO ART” lecture series on May 27.
“Observation itself becomes intervention. The foreigner is me, I am you, you are her. We who drift across oceans all find ourselves anchored within a vast sea.” Curator Dr. Chih-Yin Lee explained that "Drifting Across Oceans" introduces audiences to a world where absurdity becomes logical and the ordinary turns unexpectedly unfamiliar, allowing viewers to immerse themselves in a playful interpretive space. Through the artworks, material images perceived by the human mind are brought into reality: chairs dragging fish, writhing potting soil, and everyday materials such as branches, trunks, digital prints, photocopies, cyanotype prints, wooden strips, ropes, nails, cardboard, and aluminum packaging are transformed into hand-drawn paintings, hundreds of blue fish, intertwined branches, and objects of varying sizes, each embodying transformation and change.
Professor Min-Yuan Ma, Director of the Art Center and professor in the Department of Industrial Design at NCKU, remarked that Barbero’s works resemble the creations of a large family. Through hand-drawn paintings, hundreds of blue fish, branches, and various objects, the artist presents imaginative works characterized by movement and transformation. After leaving the exhibition, viewers may suddenly notice ordinary objects around them differently, realizing they had just encountered those familiar items reimagined within the artworks. In addition to site-specific works created at NCKU, many of the exhibited pieces were brought from Spain by the artist and his wife, making the exhibition especially worth visiting.
Manuel Barbero shared that the materials used in the exhibition were collected during his walks around the NCKU campus, Tainan’s alleyways, and Yuguang Island in Anping, before being recombined into new creations. He expressed gratitude to the Art Center team, whom he described as magicians, for helping successfully present the exhibition to the public. In his view, when the contents of a single suitcase can be transformed into an exhibition, magic is not merely illusion, but rather the expression of ideas and techniques. In addition to the exhibition, he will also teach cyanotype-based visual workshops and warmly welcomes everyone to participate.
Spanish artist-in-residence Manuel Barbero is presenting his exhibition “Drifting Across Oceans” at the NCKU Art Space from now until June 6.
Curator postdoctoral researcher Dr. Chih-Yin Lee stated that the exhibition "Drifting Across Oceans" introduces a world in which the absurd becomes reasonable and the everyday becomes unexpectedly surprising.
Professor Min-Yuan Ma, Director of the Art Center and professor in the Department of Industrial Design at NCKU, noted that in addition to the site-specific works created at NCKU, many of the pieces featured in "Drifting Across Oceans" were brought from Spain by the artist and his wife.
Spanish artist-in-residence Manuel Barbero was invited by the Art Center of NCKU in April 2026 to come to Tainan for a two-and-a-half-month artist residency program.
