Wu Tien-Chang
Unforgettable Lover, 2013, single-channel video, 4'30"
Beloved, 2013, single-channel video, 3'11"
In Wu Tien-Chang’s shift from photography to video, and returning to the latter’s incorporation into installations, we see vestiges of the complex world that he creates in each of his works. From the stories that he crafts, to the songs, costumes, and settings, the works are steeped in a nostalgia that alludes to a complex history and culture, as well as to a careful understanding and wielding of photography and film theories.
Viewers join in on Wu’s intricate staging, nostalgic reverie, and game of hide-and-seek, in the new installations, Unforgettable Lover (2013) and Beloved (2013). Throughout the video installations, Wu crafts and directs the passage of time, as it unfolds in his complex and shifting sequences. He expands on the tactics used in his installations of the 1990s, such as Dream of Past Era II (1995), and photographs of the 2000s, as in Work Side by Side (2001), crafting everything from the stage set to the costumes. The audience is directly involved in completing the works, activating the installations Unforgettable Lover and Beloved by stepping on the foot step set up by Wu. Wu’s works demand that viewers observe closely, peeking into the boudoir or the photo studio as the main characters undergo changes throughout the single shot. The sailors, drifters, young boys, and other characters fashioned by Wu, draw viewers into his illusionary worlds.
Wu Tien-Chang (b. 1956) lives and works in Taipei, Taiwan. He received a Bachelor in Fine Arts from Chinese Culture University (1980). His work has been shown internationally, including at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taipei, Taiwan (2013, 2012, 2011, 2009, 1990, 1987); the Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts, Kaohsiung, Taiwan (2011, 2010); the Soho Photo Gallery, New York, New York (2010); the Hong Kong Art Centre, Hong Kong, China (2010); Eslite Gallery, Taipei, Taiwan (2010); Art Beijing, Beijing, China (2009); Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei, Taiwan (2009); National Museum of Fine Arts, Taichung, Taiwan (2009); the National Art Museum of China, Beijing, China (2009); the Taipei Cultural Center, New York, New York (2008); and MOMA Contemporary, Fukuoka, Japan (1997).
Kao Chung-Li
The Taste of Human Flesh, 2010, 80 slides, slideshow by 1 slide machine, 20’00”
The protagonist of the work is Kao Chung-Li’s father, now 94 years old. The story told in the slideshow spans more than 90 years. A key motif in this work is the bullet in the father’s body, which has remained in his lower cranium since the days of the Chinese Civil War. Shot in the head by the Liberation Army during the Huaihai Campaign in 1948–49—a battle that was decisive for the victory of Communists over the KMT—this bullet has remained as a material witness.
Kao’s father was born in the year of the May 4th Movement (1919), and thus his biography stands for the Chinese historical experience of the twentieth century, set against the global histories of colonization, the wars of decolonization, and the struggles against neo-colonialism in the era that has called itself “globalization.” The work is a counter-story to the hegemonic version of a “universal history” entailed in the propagandistic promise of progress and modernization. The universality of historical experience —that is, general validity beyond a particular context—is here equated with the systemic violence suffered by the vast majority of humanity under colonial and imperialistic regimes. “History is like a language; it is not merely some random noises. A lot of histories are like dialects—restricted by region. Some histories, however, cannot be so restricted,” states the artist in commenting on the work. “If we compare my father’s age to a language, I think we ought to learn that language, at least enough to comprehend it.”
Kao Chung-Li (b. 1958) lives and works in Taipei, Taiwan. Kao’s work investigates the relationship between history and personal biography, between time, images, and media. He is a photographer and a collector of historical pictures as much as a filmmaker, animator, and media-archeologist. “Taking a picture means an interruption of reality. Showing that picture means a cessation of fantasy,” states the artist. For him, the slideshow in particular sustains a tension between image, time, and stillness—and is situated beyond fantasy and reality, subsuming both photography’s indexical relation to past events, and the expectancy of cinematic time and storytelling.
Yuan Goang-Ming
Smiling Rocking Horse, 2011, video installation, 52 x 88 x 8.8 cm, 48”
Smiling Rocking Horse attempts to expand on the process in generating images through the translation of different mediums, allowing one to rethink about the “daily and established conceptions,” and the relationship between “image” and “object.” The rocking horse in the video rocks as the child rides it, and gradually comes to a stop when the child leaves, with the video jumping to black. In this instant, one finds a wooden board attached to the screen, in the shape of the base of the rocking horse in the video, which is hard to notice until the video disappears. This curved wooden board becomes the “anchor” in a rocking world, and is also an “object of memory,” to contrast the fact that the rocking horse in the video was never rocking, but rather the world around the rocking horse.
The purpose of this work is to reflect reality, while also inverting preconceived notions of representation, producing a different speculative space for viewers to gain new sensory experiences between the familiar and foreign, while also achieving a new “observed” reality.
Yuan Goang-Ming (b.1965) lives and works in Taipei, Taiwan. Yuan is one of the foremost Taiwanese artists of media art, and has been a pioneer of video art in Taiwan, a medium in which he started working in 1986. In 1997, he received a Master’s degree in media art from the Academy of Design, Karlsruhe, Germany. Combining symbolic metaphors with technological media, his work eloquently expresses the state of contemporary existence and profoundly explores the human mind and consciousness. His works, ranging from photographs to multi-media installations, have been exhibited worldwide, including at the Taiwan Pavilion at the 50th Venice Biennale (2003). Recent solo exhibitions include BEFORE MEMORY (2011, TKG+, Taipei), and DISSAPPEARING TRACES (2011, TKG+, Beijing).