text by Eric Chi-Puo LIN
It's no exaggeration to describe Yao Jui-chung both as the most representative figure in the realm of contemporary Taiwanese art and also as an artist who is coming into his prime.
More than just an art-world luminary of the post-martial-law era, Yao best encapsulates the vitality of the Taiwanese art scene because he wears so many hats, including those of writer, educator, exhibition planner, and gallery executive.
He first burst onto the scene in 1994 with Military Takeover, which took a sardonic look at Taiwanese history. Helping to move Taiwan beyond the tragic wounds of the martial law era, the installation was regarded as a watershed moment in contemporary art on the island. "Artistic creation" and "written exposition" are inextricably intertwined in Yao's work, which almost always features a strong historical resonance. Frequently, Yao aims to subvert authoritarian structures or aesthetic orthodoxies.
In 2007 Yao made a creative leap when he was a resident at the Glenfiddich Artists Village in Scotland. He had previously focused on photography and installations. But at Glenfiddich he made a shift to what art critic Wu Chieh-hsiang describes as "unprecedentedly original methods." Yao began to create an aesthetic spectacle via "ersatz traditional Chinese landscapes." He used fountain and ballpoint pens, gold leaf and other untraditional media to create an abundance of fine lines, which substitute for the changes of depth found in traditional ink-wash painting.
Once started in this vein, he hasn't been able to stop. In mid-April of this year, he unveiled works from his "Honey-moon" series, in which he inserts self-narrative elements to alter classic works of mainstream Chinese art, such as Travelers Among Mountains and Streams by Fan Kuan of the Song Dynasty. Demonstrating growing maturation, the series reveals Yao reaching new heights with this style.
After the lunar New Year, I visited Yao Jui-chung's studio in east Taipei. The appointed hour had passed when I saw Yao-formerly a self-proclaimed "angry young man"-appear in the distance. He was carrying his daughter and looked fatigued. The fatherly tenderness seemed at odds with his bad-boy image.
As Yao soothed his unwell child and arranged for his wife to take the girl to the hospital, he also softly issued apologies for being late.
Since becoming a father, Yao, who was born in 1969, has entered a golden period of creativity. We ascended to his studio, on an apartment building's rooftop, where Yao unveiled one painting after another from his "Honeymoon" series. He explained how each of the works inserts modern people into vast traditional landscapes. Take, for instance, Facebook Chat (whose Chinese name means "unavoidable death" but sounds like "Facebook"). The cynic-protagonist, a recurring figure in Yao's work, sits amid vast mountain forests, occupying only a tiny portion of the painting. Despite the beautiful, unspoiled setting, the man's focus is on his iPad, as he checks his Facebook account.
Rebel from a political family
"In these works, Yao shows more manipulation of symbols than molding of images," explains Wu Chieh-hsiang, an assistant professor of fine arts at National Chang-hua University of Education, about Yao's landscapes. "The hard work involved in all the copying has seemingly tempered the aesthetic exuberance of this wise and bold artist with wide-ranging ideas. But in no way does this suggest that Yao's creative behavior is taming his proclivity for provocation."
Yao was born to a political family that came to Taiwan when mainland China fell to the Communists. His father Yao Dong-sheng was a lawyer, provincial assembly member and traditional ink-wash -painter. The elder Yao didn't have a son until he was 59, and he loved Jui-chung dearly.
Yao Dongsheng died when his son was just 19. As someone who experienced a life of luxury from a young age, Jui-chung unconsciously focused his rebellion toward his father into historical commentary. Three years after he graduated from the National Institute of the Arts (now Taipei National University of the Arts) in 1994, he represented Taiwan at the Venice Biennale. His installation Military Takeover explored the autonomous standing of Taiwanese identity.
Yao used sepia-toned photographs, toilets, dog cages, boats, cannons, blue lights and other materials, which he installed throughout the hall. Photographs of him urinating like a dog marking its territory proved to be most controversial. At the landing spots of various conquerors of Taiwan, including the Dutch, the Spanish, the Ming loyalists under Zheng Chenggong, the Qing forces, the Japanese and the ROC army, Yao took photographs of himself urinating in the nude.
This mocking look at history attracted a lot of attention in art circles. Next he worked on three series of works, including "Recover Mainland China" and "The World Is for All-China Beyond China," which aimed to subvert traditional narratives about modern Chinese history.
"I rebel against orthodoxy. Chinese civilization puts a premium on the orthodox. That pushed me to think: Taiwan has such a rich collection at the National Palace Museum. It holds the essence of Chinese civilization. But Taiwan isn't in control of most Chinese territory. So can it really be considered to represent Chinese orthodoxy?"
Yao cites his own family background: On the mainland, his father already had one family with his wife and another with a concubine. Then he came to Taiwan and married Jui-chung's -mother. "Although you can say he was forced to do this as a result of political circumstances, according to traditional Chinese values, this repre-sen-ted the taking of a concubine!" Likewise, Taiwan, despite being bullied and forced to submit to humiliations, acts as if it's the true wife. How strange! Consequently, the situation gave me an unusual perspective on history-and inspired me to go the slapstick route with urination. Ha ha!"
Renaissance man
As opposed to most artists, who work from direct observation and intuitively leap to conclusions, one of Yao's defining characteristics is that he is also a writer. In particular he authors wide-ranging and systematic works about periods of art history.
His pioneering 2002 book Installation Art in Taiwan, with over 500 full-color pages, remains the most comprehensive work about installations in Taiwan.
"During the Renaissance in Europe, artists would design, invent, write journals, and draw anatomical sketches. To this day, polymaths are called 'Renaissance men'! In China during the Ming Dynasty there were figures such as Tang Yin, who was a painter, calligrapher, writer and even a Mandarin who showed great concern for society. It's only in modern times that art has been subjected to standardization and division of labor, with the notion that artists can concern themselves only with matters 'within their own ambit.'" Consequently, Yao regards himself as something akin to those artists of earlier eras who were "Renaissance men."
With the depth of his concerns, as well as his skills at logic and narration, Yao's work starts with a strong textual basis, which then undergoes a transformation. This process give his series that aim to subvert orthodoxy a greater theoretical basis.
After those three early subversive series, Yao then turned his attention to "marginal ruins" (in contrast to orthodox works of Taiwanese architecture, such as Taipei 101). He travelled throughout Taiwan, photographing dilapidated statues of deities, industrial and military spaces, and other works of abandoned architecture. His photographic collections Roaming Around the Ruins of Taiwan, The Ruined Islands, and Beyond Humanity documented all manner of historical relics that were threatened with destruction.
With special darkroom processing skills and an ability to use the camera lens to construct narratives, his photographs conjure up a gloomy and macabre atmosphere.
He was able to capture the "dark side" of statues that had originally been invested with the powers of religious deities but have since been abandoned. Even when seen in daylight in an art museum, they still have the power to send chills down your spine!
Yet the wildly exuberant Yao hit a creative impasse in 2006.
Back then, some art-world people opened the VT Artsalon, which is half bar and half art gallery. Aiming to discover new, cutting-edge artists, VT Artsalon's founders invited the sociable and well-con-nec-ted Yao to serve as executive director. The demands of the job pulled Yao into a funk, and he grew physically and mentally exhausted. During this period, he also went to New York for the International Studio and Curatorial Program. He felt overwhelmed and at his wits' end.
A turning point in Scotland
Making matters worse, after a year in business VT Artsalon was running several million NT dollars in the red, which only further added to Yao's pressures.
At this low ebb, Yao was selected to be a resident at the Glenfiddich Artists Village program in Scotland. He stayed at the distillery in Scotland for three months. The lives of artists often feature great epiphanies and dramatic changes of course, and this was a time when Yao's creative life took a big turn!
"Scotland seemed full of creatures from the spirit world," recalls Yao. He had been too consumed with trivial matters in Taiwan, where he felt like a glass of water that was constantly being stirred, always mixed up and disturbed. But the peace and quiet of Scotland let the water in his glass settle. What was rubbish floated to the surface, and his state of mind grew clear. Originally, he had planned to take photographs, but the distillery was surrounded by "a farm that was probably 100 times the size of Wu-ling Farm." Potential photographic subjects were all just sheep and cows, and these didn't interest Yao.
Then, late one night, he suddenly thought about how his father, shortly before he passed away, expressed the wish that Jui-chung would paint his portrait. Yao decided to take up the challenge of ink-wash painting, at which his father had excelled.
Lacking the proper materials, Yao made do with what was at hand, using ballpoint pens instead of brushes and oils instead of water colors. That in itself constituted a big shift from traditional Chinese landscapes. But Yao didn't stop there: he also didn't sign his work, didn't leave blank spaces, and didn't use ink pads or stippling. Moreover, by substituting Indian jute paper for soft Chinese art paper, he created a rough surface texture like the paintings in the Dun-huang Grottoes; and he filled the spaces that had traditionally been left blank with gold leaf. He thus completely overturned "Xie He's six rules for ink-wash landscapes."
In terms of subject matter, he also subverted the lofty character of traditional Chinese painting by inserting scenes from everyday life, such as glimpses of people playing mahjong or taking baths in hot springs. Then he added comic-book elements, which are common to the artistic vocabulary of those born in the 1960s. It was as if he was pulling down Chinese scholars' moral precepts about art. Consequently, he named the series in Chinese "forgetting the moral code" (though he gave it the English name "Wonderful," which is very close to how the Chinese characters sound). Says a laughing Yao: "The angry young man, after going into exile to be a shepherd like the Han--Dynasty mandarin Su Wu, begins to closely observe his inner feelings."
At the request of artist Chen Hui-chiao, the director of the Glenfiddich Artists Village Program in Taiwan, Yao sent photographs of the paintings back to Taiwan. Unexpectedly, collectors were so enthralled that they just went ahead and bought the paintings having only seen the photos. It was the first time a Taiwanese artist in a residency program abroad was able to sell all of the artworks produced there before even sending them back to Taiwan.
Influencing government policy
After returning to Taiwan, Yao Jui-chung used micro-narratives and private journals to push limits even farther, breaking new ground again and again. His "Dreamy" series places erotic paintings within the traditional Chinese aesthetic orthodoxy. The paintings in his "Romance" series draw from his ruminations about painful private experiences.
The process of creating the texture of these paintings, which comes from the aggregation of thousands of fine lines, is akin to ascetic practice. Often, you'll find Yao alone in his studio in the dead of the night, applying one stroke at a time. These days there's no need to be sent into exile to become a shepherd like Su Wu. Even in the busy city of Taipei, one can find a few hours to sit in concentration, settling one's mind and dispelling one's anxieties.
Meanwhile, Yao launched another series of discursive art. Through the classes he was teaching at National Taiwan Normal University and Taipei National University of the Arts, he organized a survey of idle public buildings and spaces throughout Taiwan. On the one hand, the survey provided art students with fieldwork experience, often in their own hometowns. On the other hand, it shifted from his shoulders some of the burden of photographing vacant spaces around Taiwan. That task had been too much for Yao to carry out alone.
To provide greater focus and avoid political controversy, the survey steered away from faultfinding, and it didn't list architects or construction companies. It simply consisted of photos taken by class members and short accompanying narrative texts. Nevertheless, the government policies that put parking lots and museums in every town were exposed for all their madness.
The resulting book, Mirage: Disused Public Property in Taiwan, attracted the notice of ROC premier Wu Den-yih, who issued an order for all of the disused public spaces in Taiwan to be brought back to life within a year. In response, Yao launched his plan for a second survey, which was aimed both at finding disused public spaces and also at assessing the effects of the policies to revitalize them.
Most of the photos in Mirage were taken by students. But imbued with the passion that these young people feel for their hometowns, the black-and-white photos feature stark contrasts and dramatic tension. Capturing images of fancy works of architecture that have become abandoned and weed-choked or wrapped in yellow warning tape, the photos have allowed Yao to continue to explore the themes in his earlier creative series on marginal ruins-but with more sincere and wide-ranging narrative texts. The collection is a rarity in recent years: a work that both succeeds artistically and demonstrates social awareness.
A leader for the next generation
Back when he attended the Venice Biennale as a young man, Yao was spoofing Taiwan's history of colonization. Now, at age 42, his parodic installations and his metonymic mock ink-wash paintings have alike entered eras of maturity. And although his photographs of abandoned places haven't been a hit with collectors, they have turned into a vehicle for fine arts education and social vigilance.
With one hand Yao Jui-chung is reaching toward the shrine niche of traditional art, taking a mocking and mischievous approach, and with the other hand he is guiding a vital young generation of artists, pushing them to leave the ivory tower and go out among the people.
Formerly the archetypal artist as an angry young man, Yao is entering his prime. He represents the ascension of his generation of artists in Taiwan, and he is also shouldering the duty of passing down traditions and educating youth.
As an undergraduate, Yao majored in art theory. He has since regretted the choice, believing that he should have received fine arts creative training earlier in his career. Yet he has demonstrated that artistic creation is in many respects similar to work in most fields: with strenuous efforts tilling the soil, brilliant flowers will sooner or later bloom.
How beautiful is art, how marvelous hard work!
(April 2011 Taiwan Panorama/p.96-103/tr. by Jonathan Barnard) |
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