陳萬仁
Chen Wan-Jen
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Statement of the Works
中文
 
text by Chen Wan-Jen

Images of the human body are often transformed into symbols, flattened into two dimensional images, or decontextualized in digital arts. This artificial style (non-natural) is often the focus and highlight of My creative works. From "Good Morning Bill", which features an image of the human body in an artificial landscape, to the more recent works of "The Unconscious Voyage" and "Playground", which features a mosaic of the human body against a backdrop of metropolitan spaces, the solitude of human images and a digitally decontextualized mosaic turns the images of the human body into symbols, yet allows them to carry their own stories.

KITE
2004 1 min 58 sec (Single-channel video ,color, sound, 480p )


A spy cam is tied up on a kite. As the kite flies, the spy cam randomly captures the images of the landscape, sometimes even the one who’s flying the kite.
Captured images were sent back to the DV on the ground through a wireless signal receiver. Due to the heavy shakes during the movement, some images were lost, but it also caused some rain-like stripes and noises. A simple signal capturing turned out to be an interesting distortion.

Platform 2
2006 3 min 36 sec (Single-channel video Installation, color, without sound, 720p)


When everything no longer goes forward, all we need is waiting.

In a time of image explosion, people are influenced by images. What images bring to us even changed our life style and attitude. We can't help asking: what could images tell people? It shows a world that more realistic than a real one. A complete world is built and constructed out behind the screen. It seems to tell the spectators that things already happened, you have seen it, no doubt of it!

With the enormous anxious that images brought (to me), I focused the questions on the things that I care about, and reconsidered my relation with the images. Between the artistic practice and digit media, all sorts of complicated and delicate relations, I tried to develop some possibilities in it. That is, I combined the realistic and fictitious things with the invention shown of digit technology and imitating ability, created new scenery, like the one who created the universe.

In a certain image that I wanted to present is, returning to the original me, the artist. Meanwhile, I acted as God, let true people and fictitious railway platform being built and constructed again utilizing digital treatment in this work. Then a scene appears, invites you to join in the space between realities and imaginings, and makes you feel familiar but strange also. You are just like a transient guest in the journey, opening your own memory. The role people act themselves with no dialogue. “Waiting” is the only thing that becomes possible in this fictitious space.

The left part, I prefer to leave the work to answer for me.

Pigeons Crossing
2006 2 min 30 sec (Single-channel video, color, without sound, 1280*542 pixel )


This is an ordinary scene.
Pigeons flutter, and the sky is blue—just as the way it should be.
In a place where neither entrance nor exit exists, I’m thinking about what to have for tomorrow lunch.

Good Morning, Bill
2007 2 min 50 sec always loop (Single-channel video , color, without sound, 720p )


Here I use a picture from the desktop layout of Microsoft Windows system, I’ve slightly changed its original outlook by some other digital softwares. Hence we have this totally blue sky, with a man keep repeating his own movements. The main purpose of these elements is to bring the audience both a familiar and joyful feeling. Without any other suggestive concepts, the elements appear in the scene refer to what they really are. Back to the initial denotation of the subjects themselves, the images have crashed the so-called narrative and declaratory. The image also has emptied the generating of denotation by constantly repeating. Through such status, I’d like to reconsider the condition for comprehensibility of images in a more simple way, and this is also one of my attempts on responding to the media.

Airport
2007 4 min 20 sec always loop (Single-channel video, color, without sound, 720p )


Usually, I use a certain position to seek and find some normal events that occur in our daily life. I collect those to become the elements of my works. In this video, I use Google to search the pictures of airports all over the world, and juxtapose them to create a compound airport. I really care about how images can be read without pounding the meaning of the images. On the other hand, I attempt to find the borderline balance between dynamic images and static images. This means dynamic images do not have any more or less meaning than static images.

Bill goes on vacation
2008 7 min 36 sec always loop (Single-channel video, color, without sound, 720p )


In sequel to “Good Morning, Bill,” the video “Bill Goes on Vacation” is an imitation of Microsoft’s default wallpaper. Often I find my work similar to a screensaver of some sort: events happen in an enclosed loop—narratives have been eliminated and thus the image is revealed as purely what it is. The materials are cropped from the most commonplace scenes in daily life, in a meta-fictional and indifferent manner. Re-arranged and processed, the footages have become a familiar stranger.

Passage
2008 2 min always loop (Single-channel video installation, color, without sound, 720p )


My attempt is to express a certain commonly-shared experience at a certain moment, and by such attempt, the fluidity of daily life is thus underlined. I extract what are often ignored or taken for granted, taking them to a process of transformation so as to stress on the unfamiliar oscillations.
Passers-by randomly meet yet are unaware of their encounters.

Playground
2008 2 min 50 sec (Single-channel video, color, sound, 720p )


In this video, the people walking are so small that their faces and expressions cannot be discerned. Instead, they closely resemble props or decorations on a stage. It appears to be a scene replicating everyday life, but in reality, it has used a more alienated attitude to unveil a form of constant fluidity.

Umbrella Man
2008 3 min 20 sec always loop (Single-channel video, color, without sound, 720p)


A rainy day is an excuse for wandering off from linear time and a clearly defined space.
An umbrella separates raindrops and people, while it also separates people and the surroundings. Rain calms the hustle and bustle. People quietly wait for the unknown to come. Motionless individuals betray their subjectivity and become quasi-sculpture, quietly waiting for the rain to stop, for a new dawn to break.
The endless extension of waiting stills each second. Whether the sight is focused near or projected far, this distance is leading to elsewhere, an unknown place which is yet sure to come.

The Unconscious Voyage
2008 3 min always loop (3-channel video Installation, color, without sound, 3840*720 pixel )


Above the horizon,
morning stars and evening stars spread out in the same sky.
This is a game that has ended even before it actually starts.
The only connections I have are the passers-by I randomly come across.
Each of them is walking along, in the way of his own,
repeatedly treading on the path that is named perpetuity.

Cloud Becomes Tears
2008 2min always loop (Digital Photo Frame, color, without sound, 600*800 pixel )


This is a poem which drops down by chance just like rain—airy, weightless, and the footsteps seem light.
Or it is some lightness resulting from heaviness.

I Feel Crash
2009 2 min always loop (Single-channel video, color, sound, 720p)


The introduction of temporal factors to static images not only affects the readability of the original images, but changes the viewers’ perception. Although the use of digital post-production techniques to animate a series of static images is no longer a unique or innovative technique, what intrigues me during the process is the attempt to replace the original narrative qualities of the images. The feeling of “crash” that I have tried to express through this work is the underlying focus for this piece.

The End of Memory
2010 8 min always loop (Single-channel video, color, without sound, Full HD 1920*1080 )


The work was inspired by an encounter in life: in an obscure wasteland, a shabby hut, whose purpose was difficult to tell, is puffing out thick smoke. Some unusual glows appeared by the windows. No traces of other human being were in sight. The ever-changing scene in front of the artist seized him with an intense sense of being surreal.
As time passes, the impression that lingers on the artist’s mind is gradually compressed into a set of perceptions beyond expressions, until finally it is represented in The End of Memory.

Displacing
2011 5 min 55 sec always loop (2 screen video installation, B&W, without sound, 2560*720pixel )


Carried away, light falls
Becoming that bowed shadow although they’re never apart
Time claims the traveler
Quietly we seem to fly in a dream

Concerned about the millions of people
2011 1 min 07 sec always loop (Single-channel video , B&W, without sound, 480p )


This is a classic, historical photograph shot by Joe Rosenthal featuring “U.S. Soldiers Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima.”
It is well known that the American forces suffered heavy casualties in their campaign to wrest control of the island from the Japanese. This image was taken when soldiers raised the American flag at the top of a hill. With this photo, my intention is not to interpret the context of a historical item. Rather, I use whimsical methods to adjust the iconic symbol (flag) to change its message. By doing this, its meaning becomes floating and independent. Regardless of the flag’s origins, symbolism is always created after a photo of it is taken.
 
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