Philadelphia artist Isaac Tin Wei Lin's recently commissioned mural "Primary Prism" is a new permanent art installation located inside the Annenberg Center at the University of Pennsylvania. Photo by Jaime Alvarez.
Primary Prism is a new three-story mural by Philadelphia artist Isaac Tin Wei Lin located inside the Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts at the University of Pennsylvania. Co-commissioned by The Sachs Program for Arts Innovation, it is the first permanent art installation at the Annenberg Center since its opening in the early 1970’s and arrives as Penn Live Arts begins to celebrate the center’s 50th anniversary.
This installation was made possible by a generous gift from alumni Keith and Kathy Sachs and is part of a $2M renovation of the Annenberg Center’s public spaces currently underway.
“We are honored to have this new installation at the Annenberg Center,” said Christopher Gruits, Executive and Artistic Director of Penn Live Arts. “Isaac’s work brings a joyful and playful energy to our public spaces.”
About the Artist
Isaac Tin Wei Lin explores the realm where representation and buzzing abstraction meet. Lin paints calligraphic, letter-like forms that interact with a range of abstract shapes like biomorphs, lattices, and sign waves. Painting on a range of surfaces and supports, he is just as comfortable addressing a twelve-by-nine-inch canvas as he is engaging the side of a thirteen-story building. Lin’s dense calligraphy—a kind of graffiti in which comprehensible lettering gives way to pure form—evoke patterns and structures found in nature, on both the macro and micro level.
Lin has had multiple solo exhibitions including at the Asian Arts Initiative, the Print Center, and Fleisher/Ollman in Philadelphia, Park Life, Needles and Pins, and Queen’s Nails Annex in San Francisco, and Lamp Harajuku in Tokyo. Lin has been commissioned to paint several other large-scale murals, including three through Mural Arts Philadelphia; a multi-story stairway mural for Facebook’s headquarters in San Francisco; and a thirteen-story mural in Heerlen, the Netherlands, commissioned by Stitching Street Art Foundation. His work is in the collections of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Berkeley Art Museum, and the Free Library of Philadelphia.