王嘉驥
Chia Chi Jason Wang
簡歷年表 Biography
策展經歷 Exhibitions Curated
相關專文 Essays


Alienation and Reversion - Hung Yi-Chen’s Reproduction Strategy in Her Recent Work
中文
 
text by Chia Chi Jason Wang

The classical topic of “representation” in the history of Western art and literature has always been closely related to the concept of “mimesis.” For painting, the “pictorial surface” serves as a window or mirror, where scenes of the world are manifested through the artist’s painterly skills. All the material means of painting, be it rugged cave surface, white plastered wall, wooden panel, canvas, or even paper and silk, once made the “carrier” of the represented appearances, would certainly have some degree of “transparent-ness.” In the traditions of classical painting, the artist tends to erase personal, subjective “traces” of brushwork or pigment, for the pictorial surface is an impartial interface holding the image of the painted object, with which the viewer is able to perceive the objective world reflected in the window or mirror.

Since the 20th century, in modernism and subsequently in the contemporary era, though the aesthetics of “representation” has been extensively questioned, challenged and even subverted, the “pictorial surface” as the means that carries images – for abstraction and figuration alike – is still considered by most artists as an objective thing that is somewhat “neutral.” A relative distinction is that since Impressionism, the painting surface as the carrier of art has been transformed into an image field where the artist declares his/her own personal visions or make her/his subjectivity stand out. Even when the Argentine-born Italian artist Lucio Fontana (1899-1968) began his Slash Series in 1958, the fundamental nature of the canvas being the carrier of the picture plane did not budge. It is worth noting though, that in Fontana’s Slash Series, the canvas was regarded as an object in itself; it had even become an opaque thing that the artist felt it necessary to cut/slash open in order to break the myth of “representation,” thereby releasing the space of painting. The surface was “objectified” by Fontana, and the canvas, too, by showing its “objecthood,” presents a sense of “opacity.”

Similarly, Hung Yi-Chen’s (1971-) contemplations on painting stem from her dissatisfaction with its two-dimensional confines. In the artist’s statement for her solo exhibition at the IT Park gallery in 2007, she mentioned her previous attempts to bend wooden frames and shrink paint soaked canvases to re-think the three fundamental “materials,” the stretcher/canvas/paint, in relation to “painting.” By doing this, the frame and the canvas both changed into “shaped objects”; the act of twisting and shrinking also altered the neutral character of the stretcher and canvas as materials for painting. Since 2007, Hung has taken a step further and stripped the stretcher off the finished work of easel painting, while designedly maintaining the marks on the edge and the thickness on the side of the picture plane. As for the frame-less surface, Hung again uses the thickness of canvas or linen to have it moulded into specific shape. The initial abstraction of evidently geometric characteristics thus becomes not only a pictorial work, but also a three-dimensional material thing manifesting its own “objecthood.” Besides, the abstract pictorial surface rid of its stretcher is sometimes dented, other times bulging, or occasionally both, as if having an air-breathing organic quality.

In a short commentary on Hung Yi-Chen’s slightly earlier works, British artist Paul Huxley (1938-) —who was incidentally Hung’s personal tutor at the Royal College of Art—even drew the analogy between some of Hung’s artworks and the human lung, saying that she’d tried to give her painting a sense of the human body that “seem to breathe, to expand or contract.” If the organicness of a painting can be compared to cardiopulmonary functions, its “physical character” may well be plainly understood. To such a degree, Hung’s painting is characteristically closer to the making of soft sculpture, and just as a living bladder, it lets air in and out of the space between the wefts and warps of the painted fabric.

Moreover, Hung Yi-Chen has even made moulds of her formally shaped painting to produce fibre reinforced polymer (FRP) or ceramic pieces of her shaped paintings. Sometimes such means of reproduction would destroy the original works when the transition could not otherwise be successful. If we may draw similarities between the original painting and a living organism, then whether the FRP or the ceramic works would both imply the “petrification” of the original. In classical mythology, petrification generally means “death.” In Hung’s creative context, petrification is a process of metamorphosis whereby the painting is the subject of “representation.” Once the work of painting is transformed into an FRP or ceramic, the idea of “pictorial surface” in painting no longer applies; instead the FRP or ceramic must be understood in terms of an estranged “solid” or “sculpture.”

When exhibiting, it is more than often that Hung Yi-Chen would deliberately keep the original painting and have it displayed in juxtaposition with its reproduced other. Perhaps such showing reminds us of One and Three Chairs, a classic work first presented by American conceptual artist Joseph Kosuth (1945-) in 1965. Even though Hung means to refer to the issue of “reproduction” as well, the philosophical dialectic over “conceptuality” does not seem to be the real subject matter of her concern. In contrast to Kosuth’s manifestly formal litheness and comfort, Hung apparently shows more interests in the “objecthood” of her works, as well as the presentation and representation of their “hand-painted texture.” Consequently, in terms of her pursuit of aesthetics or interest, it seems that she still keeps a lingering relation to the tradition of Minimalism.

Apparently Hung’s thoughts of “reproduction” and its technical applications have focused mainly on the classical theories of “representation.” As mentioned in her statement, “Reproduction is part as well as extension of representation; it shows a strong continuity.” Nevertheless, it is necessary to point out that through the re-producing process, it is the “work of painting” as a complete substance or as a physical formation, rather than the abstract figurations she makes on the picture plane, that is being “re-presented.” Concretely speaking, Hung seemingly has more intent to expand painting as well as to make it a three-dimensional output that takes up a solid space.

In addition, the ways in which she places the “duplicate” in contrast to its “original” still fit in with the analogical aesthetics of display, which can easily provoke associations with the dichotomy of authentic/fake, or original/derived. Still, reproduction as a choice of creative strategy also works as a polemic against the concept of the “creative/original” as an absolute—the implicit interrogation is that painting or art might have become overly univocal. From this point of view, Hung’s “reproduced work,” rather than being some “virtually indistinguishable” duplicate of the original, very nearly exists in the fashion—as the Chinese idiom puts it—that “indigo blue may be extracted from the indigo plant but it ultimately exceeds its source.” In other words, Hung Yi-Chen has indeed managed to endow her “duplicate” with an “ingenious” aesthetic and beauty in its own right.

As for the stretcher, having been detached from the canvas, will it lose its functions ever since and no longer be part of art? Will the oil paint that has lost the canvas as its figuration interface confirm that painting is truly dead because it no longer has its existing position? Hung Yi-Chen tries to negotiate between the trio of stretcher, canvas, and paint, continuously engaged in a personalised deconstructing/re-constructing act. In some of her recent works produced in 2009, she has oil paint received and supported directly on the stretcher making stretcher and paint the subject matter of her presentation. In some attempts, the oil paint was even shown by inter-extrusion through layers of canvas—the paint thus formed has unexceptionally expressed its thick, dense material qualities. Here the materials of painting can still be plainly seen, yet the “pictorial surface” is no more. The work of painting as the window or mirror of “representation” has been deconstructed. The viewer no longer sees the artwork in terms of normatively defined painting, but instead of what constitutes a three dimensional object—each with its particular “material nature”, the stretcher, the canvas and the paint form structural relations in space that overlie, resist, oppose, contrast, or compliment one another.

Through means of mass production, Hung Yi-Chen qualitatively changed her “works of painting” into ceramics. The painting initially meant as a picture to be looked at thus transforms into a solid object that can even be held and played with by the viewer. On the interactive display platform offered by Hung, when the invited viewers take the reproduced art in their hands, they have to execute—thereby witness—the act of smashing an artwork. A total of 480 pieces/copies are neatly stacked on clear shelves according to the storage system of mass-produced products, while waiting their turns, at the same time, to be smashed by the viewer, one by one, onto the designated mound. What kind of creative logic and artistic significance does it symbolise or signify with such a spatial installation and behavioural mobilisation? As aforementioned, for Hung Yi-Chen, the purpose of “reproduction” is to show neither distain nor disrespect for the original; therefore on a symbolic level, each of the 480 copied works can actually be equally regarded as a doppelganger of “art.” Besides, these 480 times of the smashing process also represent 480 irreversibly lived experiences that cannot be replaced by one another.

From another perspective, designing the action for smashing copied works is an inquiry into the nature of art. Simply put, “smashing” can be as much understood as a perseverance that has to get to the ultimate bottom of things. It would inevitably touch upon the ever-present issues in art, the questions of the relative and the absolute. The former may refer to the value of the artwork as something material, an object or even a commodity, while the latter is concerned with the spiritual nature of artistic creation as well as the experience of it all. In the context of Hung’s exhibitions, the “smashing” offsets the “having,” but it also changes into one remarkably memorable experience the participant would physically or mentally have.

In conclusion, although Hung Yi-Chen exploits the strategy of reproduction, she never truly diverts the aspect of viewpoint from the principle of art, and the nature of its making. On the one hand, she tackles techniques of creating, intending to explore another possibility of a new artistic language. On the other, using “representation” as an excuse and in the guise of “reproduction,” she reflects upon the expressive forms of painting. Through the inter-workings of these two, she highlights the “objecthood” of artworks, and in so doing, offers a rhetorical retort to the aura of art.

As for the “one and only” aesthetic value of art, it is evident that Hung Yi-Chen still has her pure and steadfast faith …
 
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