吳季璁
Wu Chi-Tsung
簡歷年表 Biography
個展自述 Statement
相關評論 Other Criticism
相關專文 Essays
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Artist Statement

Although I have been involved in art related activities for 6-7 years, I have only been a “professional artist” which is to say “dedicated my life to art” for around one year.

To a certain extent my earlier works were always pure and focused on broad image forms, as part of an effort to reflect on the essential nature of images and through them discuss the act of “viewing.” Perhaps that approach was a reflection of how simple my life used to be, as a result of which my reflections on art were focused but narrow.

I used to innocently believe that producing “good” work would be enough to shake the world and bring about brand new ways of thinking that would help change everything. Only later did I find that things are never that simple. A cursory survey of the contemporary art environment in Taiwan shows it to be comprised of an art media that believes itself to be selling advertisement catalogues, art commentaries that mislead readers day in day out (they should be dispatched to take writing classes at the Mandarin Daily News), occasional part time curators (is anyone really conducting research) and short sighted, money-grubbing local galleries (who subscribe to the views of senior Hong Kong policeman Lee Rock: “If I'm going to be greedy then I'm going to be really greedy”). There is no way an art community built on these four broken legs can ever help an artist achieve international renown. Of course there are also the crushed bones of the museums and art schools, but this is a short article so there is not enough space to curse them as much as they deserve, so that will have to wait for another article.

The development of artists in this environment can be broadly divided into two categories (the following can perhaps be used as a reference for senior high school students applying to college):

Amateur: this refers to individuals who make a living with one a non-art related job but produce art in their spare time whenever the opportunity arises. Amateur artists also take part in commercial or entertainment oriented displays to assuage their guilt. The types of jobs most often chosen are in the fields of design or education, though the danger posed by the latter is more serious. Such people devote their lives to teaching but life is easy and so they achieve little of note in the world of art. Even worse, they do not know what art is for, but still have to teach students every day. Terrified of being found out they obfuscate and lie, transforming art into something mysterious and impenetrable. But this is not unusual and can be considered even pardonable, because if I was teaching advanced calculus I might do exactly the same.

Professional: this category can also be subdivided into artists who rely on public resources and those who make a living in the marketplace. The former broadly speaking includes artists who live on sponsorship grants and the like, those residents of various artists’ village and artists who contract for various projects on a regular basis. The latter actually enter the market, which after all is the proper course of action for those seeking to live off their art, but the styles and professionalism favored their rapidly force them to embrace commercialization. As such, a further distinction is that between successful and failed artists. After making a lot of money, successful artists complain that their achievements are not recognized, failures complain that their achievements are not recognized and that they damn well made no money.

Having reached this point I am overcome with a sense of sadness at being a contemporary artist in Taiwan. It is very difficult to honestly tell my parents this is a profession with respect and prospects. However, there are a few rare and special cases, when individuals have been able to escape the restrictions of the environment, for example Chen Chieh-jen. Special cases sound cool and perhaps this is the thing to work towards in future, especially as art only has value in as much as it is a special example of creativity.

Having rambled on so much this article will cost an arm and a leg to translate, so let me get back to the main point. My thinking on art has gradually evolved from abstraction to metaphysical dialectics and more recently sought to address the real world in which we live.

By which I mean an attempt to depict my own feelings and imaginings on the modern world.

Crystal City

There is another invisible world in which we live each and every day. It is made up of electronic equipment, programs, networks, media and information, and I call it “Crystal City.”

I chose the word “crystal” because this world grows like a crystal, each individual element within it automatically coming together and infinitely expanding and spreading according to a set internal rhythm and logic.

It is transparent, light, invisible and lacking in volume and yet still projects a world of unparalleled reality.

This is a place I consider my spiritual home.

 

 
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