text by Chia Chi Jason Wang
J.C. Kuo was born in 1949 in Lugang Township, Zhanghua County, Taiwan. In 1967, he became a protege of the influential modern painter Lee Chun-shan (1912-1984), taking inspiration from abstract art and Freudian psychoanalytic theory. From 1969 to 1973, Kuo studied at the Fine Arts Department of the College of Chinese Culture (today's Chinese Culture University), while continuing to study under Lee Chun-shan. Under these influences, Kuo developed his predominantly abstract "amoebic" style of painting in the early 1970s. Through the morphological alteration of the human body and the insertion into his paintings of parts of concrete objects - for example, neckties - J.C. Kuo expressed his interest in people's subconscious desires and his observations of society.
From 1976 to 1977, J.C. Kuo applied for and received a grant from the Asia Foundation to engage in field research on Taiwanese folk art. This experience proved to be a crucial influence on his later creations. The Native Soil Literature Movement of the 1970s, focusing on concern for Taiwanese society, led to the outburst of the "Native Soil Literature Debate" in 1977, and this also proved a significant source of inspiration for Kuo. By 1979, Kuo's painting style had evolved from his early abstraction to a style he called "life realism." His subject matter became the bustling activity of people on the streets, and a consciousness of criticism permeated his paintings.
From the late 1970s through the 1980s, Kuo continued to struggle between practical employment and personal artistic endeavors. Even though his workload was taxing, Kuo still attempted to achieve some balance, and during this period he developed a basic mode of shaping his pictures that joined black lines with the images of people from ancient times. Kuo blended traditional Chinese line drawing, especially the tradition of woodblock printing, with the spirit of American pop art, forming a special and powerful contrasting style juxtaposing East and West and boldly expressing a visual language of opposition, or even conflict, between East and West. In terms of expression of images, Kuo consciously added to his foundation of concrete realism a depictive element of brush quality and form suggestive of abstract expressionism. At the same time, the contrasting and complementary perspective of his colors became quite distinct and resplendent.
Generally speaking, in developing his painting style in the 1980s, J.C. Kuo began moving toward a more complex structural mode. His realism of a slightly earlier period, which emphasized a reflection on social realities, gave way to painting surfaces on which expressionism won the day. On these surfaces, Kuo began attempting to condense the disparities between ancient and modern history and the differences between Oriental and Occidental culture, and to superimpose them on the same canvas. That is to say, the functional spaces of the real world were replaced by the spaces of history and culture.
Kuo's perspective on history stressed the spatial and temporal divide between the traditional and the modern, whereas his treatment of culture underscored a strong contrast between East and West. Moreover, Kuo's paintings knowingly articulated the phenomenon of the turbulent overlapping of ancient and modern history and Chinese and Western culture through the method of temporal juxtaposition. Kuo's use of the technical strategy of condensing Chinese, Western, ancient and modern history and culture, moreover, endowed his paintings with dramatic tension. In particular, the sense of conflict steadily increased in his pictures.
Thus, Kuo found a richer form of expression with greater cultural depth and historical breadth to re-convey the "exaggeration, uncertainty and disarray of the times" that he himself had observed in 1979. What was different was that he no longer simply used the method of reflecting superficial reality to criticize the modern era, but sought out the roots of history and culture to engage in a more penetrating deconstruction or dissection.
Because of the growth and expansion of the scale of the economy, Taiwanese society around 1989 finally attained a degree of self-sufficiency, but still possessed an insular and fragile art industry and market. At the height of his career, Kuo resolutely quit his job and re-embraced his endeavors as a full-time artist. The crucible of the marketplace caused him to thoroughly and deeply observe the concrete composition and structure of the societal strength behind Taiwan's economic miracle. His reflections on these experiences later fed back into the content of part of his artwork beginning in the 1990s.
Since the 1990s, J.C. Kuo has continued to explore specific themes, borrowing from traditional Chinese myths (his series of works on The Phenomena of the Mythical Age from 1993), blending the icons of Eastern and Western religion (the St. Taiwan series, from 1998 to 2000), or referencing popular folk beliefs, including such specific themes as the "Eight Generals" performance troupes of Taoism (1994's Icons and Images of Taiwan) or the Eighteen Arhats of Buddhism (18 Lohans of 2005), and infusing these themes with such subject matter as Taiwanese contemporary politics, economics, society and culture. In this way, Kuo has expanded and built up his own abilities of artistic expression, while also extending and deepening the outlook of his "life realism," which he has pursued since 1979, exploring Taiwanese society's collective psychology and subconscious at progressively deeper levels.
In his 1993 solo exhibition, The Phenomena of the Mythical Age, Kuo borrowed Chinese mythological allusions, but actually infused them with the predicaments and conditions of Taiwanese society. He transformed the story of Kua Fu Chasing the Sun into the series Day for Night, and used this as his personal, alternative interpretation of the phenomena arising from Taiwan's "economic miracle." In his paintings, Kua Fu became a portrait of today's Taiwanese people. The clocks in the paintings and the scenes of Kua Fu holding up the sun are all fresh depictions of the day-to-day efforts of Taiwanese people to better themselves.
In his 1994 solo exhibition Icons and Images of Taiwan, Kuo added many unusual, conflicting formal elements - for example, collages of three-dimensional emblems, and the use of traditional floral patterns found on Taiwanese bed sheets. At the same time, he added abstract lines, for the purpose of hinting at speed and fragmenting his canvasses. In terms of his use of images, Kuo appropriated the face-paint patterns of the "Eight Generals" performance troupes from Taiwanese folk religion, attempting to endow them with political and social content and thus criticize the disorderly state of present-day Taiwan. Kuo also developed new methods of expression enabling his pictures to recreate the violence and chaos of society, and giving his pictures a tumultuous or unsettled kind of balance.
In 1995 and 1996, Kuo held two solo exhibitions, Picturing Taiwan and '95~'96 Chronicles. Kuo ramped up the sense of opposition, conflict and paradox in his visual forms, even goading the viewer's psychological state, causing him or her to feel a strong visual pressure.
Following 1993's The Phenomena of the Mythical Age and 1994's Icons and Images of Taiwan, he unveiled another major exhibition that was even more of a milestone, 1998's St. Taiwan. Using the highly ironic form of the "icon," the images in Kuo's St. Taiwan were actually filled with an iconoclastic bearing that scorned fashionable aesthetics, media manipulation and new religious superstitions, and flew in the face of viewers' expectations. Through one seemingly simple, uncomplicated iconic image after another, Kuo laid bare the inner conflicts, contentions and contradictions of Taiwanese society, its multiple, cacophonous and diametrically opposed realities - hidden in the background of which was a polyphony of cultural stimuli and influences: the native heritage of Taiwan, the traditions of China, the post-colonial legacy of Japan, the modernity of the West.
In late 2002 and early 2003, J.C. Kuo released his series of paintings titled Tablets, reflecting on the culture of adulation commonplace in Taiwanese society. His mode of execution was to gather frequently seen forms and symbols from tradition, folk customs and contemporary popular consumer culture, even using a large quantity of readymade goods, then piece them together and paste them into his pictures, turning them into a series of inlaid paintings blending the old with the new. He appropriated the traditional horizontal inscription plaque, on the one hand, as a surface form, while also endowing it with a popularly accessible purpose and context, transforming it into a more complex cultural vehicle.
In 2005 Kuo once again employed the expressive mode of the icon in his series 18 Lohans, conveying his observations and interpretations of Taiwan's contemporary society and all its living beings. In 18 Lohans he reflected on the cyclical transmigration of life, exploring the fundamental value of life, and pondered the ultimate meaning of human life in this world. In this series of paintings with extremely vivid images and colors, Kuo invited some of his friends to serve as the models for his lohans (arhats) - spiritual practitioners who have attained nirvana. Thus, under the artist's brush, they too were listed as lohans. The artist subjectively saw in each individual a resolute dedication toward society and life, or a positive meaning for existence that ought to be put more fully into play.
The lohans that Kuo painted were not exemplary sages that have renounced the world, but rather a kind of hope expressed in images. For him, a lohan seems to be also a kind of internally generated archetypal value. Contrasting with the many disorderly phenomena appearing in contemporary Taiwanese society, especially political pandemonium, media sensationalism, ethnic antagonism, ethical confusion, psychological volatility, the contortion of values and so forth, Kuo breaks from his customary tone of fervent criticism. Instead, in his painting series 18 Lohans, he manifests a calm, composed, centered sense of stability, while also deliberately expressing the urgency in the here and now of the morality of self-discipline and the value of self-motivation.
In the past and in the present, J.C. Kuo has continued to observe, portray, represent and interpret the various phenomena of Taiwanese society since the lifting of martial law (in 1987) through his own artistic expression using close-up visual angles. Kuo has addressed the shifting, topsy-turvy state of post-martial-law Taiwan through a deepening and a manifestation of his visual vocabulary, attempting to concretely reflect the "variegated" phenomena of Taiwanese society and culture.
This exhibition has brought together highlights of J.C. Kuo's work since 1990, under the theme of Totem and Taboo. The title Totem and Taboo is derived from a book of the same name published in 1913 by Sigmund Freud (1856-1939). In primitive societies, all norms, be they totem or taboo, arise from the group's collective psyche of self-preservation, perpetuation and procreation. The various rituals, laws and social stipulations that arise from these sources form collective identification, desires, inhibitions and fears. By expanding and elaborating the meaning of this borrowed name, J.C. Kuo has communicated his own individual milieu of concern for Taiwanese society.
In contrast to the mutual strife and schism between ruling and opposition parties in Taiwan's political arena, which has caused fissures in the hearts and minds of society and formed a tumultuous sense anxiety and disquiet, Kuo has focused on the subject of "Totem and Taboo" in an attempt to draw from the rites, ceremonies and beliefs common among Taiwanese people, to explore the universal view of life and the cultural memories that the people have collectively shared for a very long time. Likewise, in the midst of tension and antagonism among different communities in society, he observes the many psychological inhibitions and fears that people instinctively release when they sense that their survival is threatened. Through his paintings, Kuo highlights Taiwanese people's collective psychological desires, rather than superficial fractures or conflicts of interest.
Over the past century, Taiwan has existed in a constant state of social crisis, yet the deep-seated desire and the orientation toward life in people's hearts has always been a longing for stability and peace. This dissonance between reality and desire, this feeling of political and social imperilment, has created a commonly held consciousness of crisis. In order to survive, to propagate and prosper, Taiwanese people frequently must suppress and sacrifice their hearts' true desires, even engaging in trickery when necessary, to accumulate wealth and create the greatest amount of happiness in life. The many works that J.C. Kuo has created over the past two years, especially such vivid, large-scale paintings as Eight-Power Allied Expeditionary Force (2006), Convention Center (2006), Conference (2007) and Joy to the World! (2006), all seem to express these kinds of universal desires.
Starting with his painting St. Taiwan - Democracy, released in 2000, the images of balloons began to appear in Kuo's works. He continued to use them in his 18 Lohans of 2005, and even more recently they have appeared in a more systematic manner and in greater numbers in his works created from 2006 to the current day. In his St. Taiwan series, balloons originally served as symbolic images of frivolity and flamboyance, more a representation of the hollowness of human nature and an expression of social sarcasm. But with his 18 Lohans and his works beginning in 2006, balloons seemed to have correspondingly evolved into emblems of tantalization (perhaps a play on words, as "longing" and "balloon" are homonyms in Chinese).
Kuo used the levitating state of balloons as a metaphor for the various predicaments that Taiwan has faced from the past to the present. Employing balloons as symbols of universal human longing, Kuo reflected Taiwanese people's unremitting collective apprehension and sense of crisis. In his large painting Totem and Taboo - Floaters (2007), for example, he depicts a dozen or so young men and women full of vitality. Brimming with physical energy, they exhibit a vibrant, attractive physical condition and form a ritualistic rhythm of group dance. In the painting are three bright, beautiful, big balloons, suggesting a playful relationship with the young men and women. But no matter how hard the people might hit them, the balloons ultimately can only float listlessly in the air. They cannot fly very high or be hit very far. The strenuous physical exertion of the men and women in the painting contrasts with the balloons, which seem to remain unmoved. Kuo uses the image of balloons to symbolically refer to the current state of Taiwanese society. In other words, the contrasting images of floating balloons and bodies in motion form a sense of futility, of spinning one's wheels. In this way, he reflects the collective psychological state of anxiety that commonly exists in Taiwanese society.
Looking back over the past 15 years, J.C. Kuo has presented a unified body of observations and depictions of Taiwanese society with a vision that bridges sociology and anthropology, in what could almost be called a succession of "thematic" solo exhibitions. Each of his exhibitions is an exposition on the phenomena of Taiwanese society.
In general, since the late 1980s, J.C. Kuo through his characteristically heavy, bold black lines, has produced a strikingly colorful style in the Taiwanese contemporary art world. He has acutely expressed a kind of brilliant, resplendent, heterogeneous form, making generous use of collaged, overlapping, juxtaposed shapes and images, forming a long sequence of images in which the realistic and the abstract coexist. Kuo's artworks have but one objective, to singularly unveil an irreversible contemporaneity, forcing the viewer to confront the present times, and return to the here and now. Consequently, his paintings possess a courageous spirit of "I am the now" and "Now is reality."
Looking back on the artistic life of J.C. Kuo, one might define him as a member of the first generation of artists born after World War II, and also one of Taiwan's first contemporary artists. His artistic cultivation and training, while highly eclectic, ultimately arose from a personal self-awareness and broad reading and experimentation. He continues to take the world as it is in the present day as the springboard of his creative consideration, and whether it be his concern for society or his development of a personal artistic vocabulary, always maintains a high degree of self-consciousness - and it is for this reason that his works always possess a pronounced quality of contemporary relevance.
Kuo's formal language also reflects the hybrid nature of Taiwanese culture. From the friction existing among Taiwanese, Chinese, Japanese and Western elements, he has generated an individual system that is visually vivid, powerful in expressive vocabulary, and highly charged with artistic tension. This quality that is both distinctly Taiwanese and decidedly international is seldom seen among artists of the same generation.
As an individualistic artist, J.C. Kuo has produced a cumulative body of artworks that affords us a glimpse into how the first generation of artists born and raised in Taiwan in the post-World War II era have explored the possibilities for a uniquely Taiwanese form of contemporary art.
(Translator/ Brent Heinrich) |
