Weak Painting? by Pan Ping-Yu

With the advent of the practically unlimited use of media, being an art creator today is bliss, despite the existence of ongoing debates, conflicts, natural evolution, and mix of numerous modern and post-modern ideas reflecting the avant-garde, which continue to challenge boundaries and open up a new territory for contemporary art. Yes, despite all this it’s worth noting that this big new territory, influenced by globalization and contemporary technological networks, has generated a different type of artistic creation, featuring the use of the Internet and the value of sharing, diversity and disappearing discipline boundaries.

The subject of this exhibition, “Weak Painting?”, may lead viewers to question whether they are responding again to the age-old declaration “painting is dead”. Certainly not. It has been 170 years since the French Academic, realistic painter Paul Delaroche(1797-1856)made this exclamation upon witnessing the advent of the Daguerreotype in 1839. We have come to understand this seemingly astonishing declaration as a strategic issue brought up by conceptual artists and art critics to direct our attention towards the role of media in art. Although we can see that these expressions and declarations are reasonable and necessary in terms of their contexts, it is important to realize that, from early modern times to the present, the dialectical development of painting itself has proved this statement to be a “false issue”. In an age that celebrates the use of the Internet, the value of sharing, multiplicity, and interdisciplinary art, it’s outmoded to discuss the future of painting in terms of the idea of mainstream popularity, competitions and conflicts, not to mention the natural erosion and evolution of ideas. “Painting is dead” is destined to be replaced by new issues as painting continues to face new challenges and mutate with time.

At the turn of the 21st century, our interest in new technologies and digital media recalls the fascination with the industrial revolution, mechanical production and science at the turn of the 20th century. Although the influences are different, there seems to be some resemblance between the two: namely, the curiosity of human nature that leads us to discover the new explains our common anticipation of new technologies and digital media. However, contrary to ideas from the last century, we also need to note that in the field of art, media as such is not message; in fact, message is transmitted through the material and nonmaterial means of technology and media. Therefore, media itself is a manipulated means, lacking autonomy. Artists use the media to convey their messages while the viewer in turn receives the messages from the media. Finally, in addition to calling for an evaluation of the role of new technology and digital media as an art form rather than a new media, it is equally important to indicate that, painting, being a classical art genre, currently raises different issues from those raised by new technology and digital media.

The title of this exhibition, “Weak Painting?”, suggests a transition stage in the development of painting, which blurs the boundary between the mainstream and the alternative. We can tell from the works of these contemporary artists that the recent trend of Internet use, the value of sharing, multiplicity, and interdisciplinary art have profoundly influenced both our daily life and current art practices. Moreover, different types of media are not incommensurable or opposed to each other; rather, their diversity allows artists to enjoy more freedom in artistic expression.

The show “Weak Painting?” exhibits the way young artists respond to contemporary issues based on their reflections on the history of painting, and shows how today’s plethora of various images that permeate everyday life are reflected in their works. In an essay entitled “An Art that Eats Its Own Head- Painting in the Age of the Image” (published in The Triumph of Painting, which involves a selected collection of paintings from the Saatchi Gallery), the art critic Barry Schwabsky writes “For although it was photography that taught us the modern idea of the image, it is painting that allows us to internalize it..…. It is a place where both differences and similarities are consumed.” (Schwabsky, 2005:009). His analysis confirms the primacy of painting at the root of subjective expression, which coincides with the idea of autonomy to which many artists aspire; we feel strongly that the artists featured in this exhibition share this aspiration. On the other hand, these artists have no intention to fight against photography or digital media for the supremacy of painting; instead, photography or digital media, like painting, constitutes an inevitable part of their creativity, work and leisure life.

The fifteen artists represented in this exhibition are from Taiwan, Japan, Korea and the United States, ranging in age from 22 to 30. They include: Wang Liang-Yin (Taiwan, 1979-), Wang Tzu-Ting (Taiwan, 1987-), Chiou Jyian-ren (Taiwan, 1981-), Hsu Yin-Ling (Taiwan, 1987-), Huang Hai-Hsin (Taiwan, 1984-), Huang Hua-Chen (Taiwan, 1986-), Huang Chia-Ning (Taiwan, 1979-), Fan Yang-Tsung (Taiwan, 1982-), Tian Bao-Chang (Taiwan, 1982-), Tsai Yi-Ting (Taiwan, 1981-), Samuel T. Adams (U.S.A, 1980-), Nari Choi (Korea,1983), Benjamin Swallow Duke (U.S.A, 1977), Yuhi Hasegawa (Japan, 1980-), Rob James Kolomyski (U.S.A, 1970-). Their works contribute to the diversity of this painting exhibition.


Real/Unreal Journey

It may be more proper to say that the subject of Wang Liang-Yin’s work is images of desserts rather than desserts per se, since these images tend to trigger our appetite. All the forms and colors in her paintings remind us of pleasant things, and then, the next moment, fade away in the blink of an eye; suggesting a fusion of endless pursuit, frustration and courage. The free-floating drippings of paint on her canvas seem to follow the tradition of abstract expressionism, while the images of desserts playfully vacillate between the concrete and the abstract.

Chiou Jyian-ren’s painting presents a poetic space of image narratives. He considers life to be a story in progress, consisting of a series of ordinary images, and tries to juxtapose these quotidian scenes in the two-dimensional space of the canvas. The use of overlapping images and daubs of paint make manifest the passage of time, in which every moment of life is a tableau grasped and captured. His work epitomizes a life with two roads, including the seen and the unseen, the finished and the unfinished, the poetic and the desired, as well as the trivial and the banal.

Wang Tzu-Ting conceives all the images and messages of life as a giant virtual stream, and uses painting as a way to reveal the content/meaning of these enigmatic messages. The action of painting allows the once vague and blurred images to incarnate. Although she paints herself and paints everyone, the figures in these portraits seem like someone or no one at all. Painting is just action for its own sake.

The “shadow and flux of things” fascinates the American artist Samuel T. Adams. He observes it in people and events, travelers and cultural phenomena, the literary and the ordinary. The “shadow” is a metaphor for the silhouette of things, obscuring details and concealing secrets. His picture plane is constructed with abstract, concrete and semi-concrete images that represent his interest in the discomfort, incoherence, and absurdity that characterizes the contemporary ambience in general. He explores the flux of meaning in these things as they are represented and interpreted on his canvas, and the way this characterizes the painterly experience.

At first glance, Huang Chia-Ning’s work seems to resemble the photo-paintings of Gerhard Richter (1932-), sharing his intention in probing the issues concerning the dialectic between photography and painting that unearths issues—photographic image as “found object”, the objectification of visual experience, and the ambiguity between concrete and abstract images. However, far from mimicking Richter, who has left almost no room for further thinking on these issues, Huang Chia-Ning turns her attention to the exploration of the content of photographic messages and the myriad possibilities of rereading these images through the process of painting, paintings that enable her to discover and convey her subjective feelings.

Flying is a childhood dream and a collective dream of all human beings. Although the invention of mechanical flight has partially realized this dream, not everyone can fly whenever they want. Fan Yang-Tsung brings the viewer into the perspective of flying, sitting in the pilot’s seat in front of his work. But be advised, the journey about to begin is not a realistic one. The video-game-like aircraft instrument panel and the view outside the window all point to an imaginary journey. Fan Yang-Tsung’s painting language uses both abstract and decorative patterns to construct his world, taking us on a celestial journey of fantasy.

The American artist Rob James Kolomyski takes the canvas as a unique space for pure expression, regarding it not only as the beginning and procession of any possible journey, but also as an abstract/concrete space for sentimental exploration. His work is a mixture of abstract expressionism and German expressionism. In his Portrait and Head series, the head and facial expression hazily emerge from the dynamic brushstrokes, the canvas then transforming into a site of visual exploration where the artist’s perception intersects reality.


Canvas as Theater

Tian Bao-Chang paints neither beautiful nor happy people. Sitting in the corner of a café, his cool gaze can always identify the people who’s hearts carry all sorts of burdens. He quietly paints the scenes from real life on small sketchbooks rather than large canvases, a process that echoes the small and insignificant existence of our reality. Nevertheless, his work also conveys a sense of the ease of being small; it seems that the figures portrayed in his life theater tend to say “Well, this is our way of living.” His sketch always reminds me of the pairing of humbleness and pride in the Chinese singer Zhang Chu’s song “Lonely People Are Shameful” (1994).

Tsai Yi-Ting’s work centers on her home. In her painting, family members perform the drama. Since home is usually where we easily let down our mental defenses and protective mechanism, these “performers” themselves are not aware of the gaze of camera and director; they approach the camera and run out of the frame at will. While every glance, gesture and interaction links to a particular sentiment or emotion, every body movement reveals a supporting configuration of the drama; these delicately depicted details contribute to the subtlety of Tsai Yi-Ting’s family theater.

Huang Hua-Chen also paints people. She begins by studying her friends and family and further extends her interest to investigate individual differences and similarities as well as mutual relations. She tries to know herself, identify individual position and reveal people today through endless exploration and comparison of one individual to another. She uses thick daubs of acrylic paint to render the face and skin, presenting a series of homogeneous portraits by gradually effacing individual aspects. However, paradoxically, the individual differences become highlighted in this manner.

Hsu Yin-Ling’s painting invents a “manor”, in which she borrows the idea of a utopia, and transforms it into a model for examining humanity. In her “manor”, all the furniture is clearly and minutely delineated, while faces remain vague and fuzzy. It seems that no matter how ideal the design or proper the description, the complexity of humanity cannot be represented. Nevertheless, the artist’s aim lies not in discussing the possibilities/impossibilities of carrying out the ideal of a utopia, but in establishing a doll-house “manor” as a mirror for reflecting manifold humanity, in order to explore the interrelations of our being, society and illusive value systems.

The world in Benjamin Swallow Duke’s painting is a surrealist expression of the real world. He asks himself “Is this the way the world is? “Is this the way the world is in this work?” or “Am I in the world or is the world in me?” These questions evoke the philosophy of Zhuangzi's Butterfly Dream and the relative understanding of real, surreal and self-identity. He has embarked on a journey of self-discovery with a sense of humor.

Huang Hai-Hsin’s painting tries to unveil the secrets of body language in everyday life and news media photographs. In these well-organized photographs, body language conveys different types of messages on public occasions. The artist attempts to disclose the emptiness, contradiction and absurdity underlying these messages, emphasizing the illusory aspects of human existence.

The creation of a male and a female figure in the Korean artist Nari Choi’s painting is inspired by images from mayonnaise and ketchup labels. The artist assumes that the way we dress and act are influenced by certain archetypal roles and their interactions; therefore, she invents two fictional characters representing both sexes in her painting, and demonstrates their ritualistic action and interaction in an imaginative and whimsical way.
The Japanese artist Yuhi Hasegawa’s work concerns humanity’s constant sway between the primitive and the civilized. The effect achieved by contrasting bright, bold colors with dark ones, when accompanied by rough and unconstrained brushstrokes, recalls the wild power of nature. The incessant struggle of two extreme forces animates the picture plane.