When Tina Keng entered Taiwan’s art world three decades ago, her career — and the industry’s future — was far from assured.

       “It was like a desert — so much uncertainty,” said Keng, 72, a veteran Taiwanese gallerist, as she stood in her namesake gallery in Taipei on a recent afternoon. She recalled how, in the 1980s, when she left her job in real estate sales to pursue a career in galleries, “the market was still very much dominated by Western art.”

       She saw this clearly at an auction preview in Paris about three decades ago. There, she encountered a painting by Sanyu, a Chinese-born French painter, alongside works by Matisse and Monet. She was struck by how Sanyu’s work was just as impressive as the other artists’, but received little attention in Asia.

       “I saw the potential of artists with Chinese linkages — both aesthetically and commercially,” Keng said, explaining her decision to collect and present artwork by Chinese-rooted artists like Mr. San and Zao Wou-Ki, a Chinese-born French painter known for his oil paintings. “I made up my mind to bring them to Asia since then.”

       Now, she does exactly that, showing modern and contemporary paintings by artists of different generations at Tina Keng Gallery, an inviting space on the ground floor of a six-story building in a busy technology area in the city’s Neihu district. In the basement of the same building, the gallery’s sister brand, TKG+ — run by Keng’s daughter, Shelly Wu, 42 — displays immersive multimedia installations and experimental projects, many by local talents. With Keng’s gallery embracing classics rooted in Chinese heritage, and Wu’s looking to the future, the spaces are a study in contrasts.

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