text by Eric Chi-Puo LIN
Innovative, ambitious, meticulous, a magnet for sponsors—a genius: Taiwan artist Wang Jun-jieh is recognized as all of these.
Around the millennium year, playing the twin roles of artist and entrepreneur, Wang launched a series of cross-disciplinary exploratory projects playing games with the fictions and realities of consumerism. At the peak of his career and artistic creativity, enjoying the abundant resources and unrestrained opportunities that his magical success had brought, he seemed capable of anything he wished.
But in 2002 two sudden tragedies changed his life dramatically. Wang retreated somewhat from public life and began a long journey of exploration into the essence of art and self.
In early summer this year, Project Rrose: Love and Death—an exhibition which “appropriated” a famous work from French artist Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968)—seemed to subtly reveal a sense of sadness, perhaps even anxiety, at Wang’s approaching 50th birthday.
We met at the Center for Art and Technology in Taipei National University of the Arts (TNUA) in Guandu, where he works as an assistant professor. In a subterranean level of the university’s concert hall, Wang transfers his cellphone calls to a landline so he doesn’t lose touch with the world.
Although it’s the middle of the summer holiday, Wang is very busy dealing with endless affairs, including preparations for three exhibitions: solo, joint, and curatorial. He is also preparing to take over the position of dean in his department in the coming semester.
Twin personalities
Competent, meticulous, a good communicator, an excellent planner and promoter—this is how most people who think they know him see Wang. But while he certainly displays these qualities in his professional life, it is equally true that as an artist, he rarely allows others access to his inner self.
“My work demands a team of professionals—producers and photographers, for example—and we also need sponsorship,” says Wang. And while some feel uneasy about the intrusion of finance into art, for cross-disciplinary mixed-media installation works to be professionally presented, big money is often as essential as cooperation from various professional colleagues. But as long as the artist is able to point the way and keep things on track, the money is incidental—“even if sponsors want their logos to be seen as part of an exhibition.”
Wang’s latest work—Project Rrose: Love and Death—currently showing at the Galerie Grand Siecle in Taipei’s eastern district, has posed a number of questions: “What is he trying to do? Do these works show us the real Wang at almost 50?”
It’s interesting that while these issues have been raised many times in private conversations, they have never been aired publicly. This may be because the theme of “disclosure” is a private issue, so no one is willing to take the initiative to speak for the artist.
The exhibition of Project Rrose: Love and Death includes video, photography, an “erotic objects” series and a “territory” series. The video work is the highlight of the exhibition, with Wang borrowing certain obscure visual elements of Duchamp’s final installation work entitled Given: 1. The Waterfall, 2. The Illuminating Gas.
Project Rrose
Duchamp’s work was created in secret over a period of two decades from 1946 to 1966 and was only revealed to the public after his death.
It is designed to be visible only through a pair of peepholes (one for each eye) in a wooden door. The scene is of a nude woman lying on her back with her face hidden and legs spread, one raised hand holding a gas lamp in the air against a landscape backdrop. Because of the viewer’s limited scope of vision, it is difficult to suppress curiosity and eagerness to see what’s happening, and this naturally creates an imagined fantasy—a scene impossible to see through the two holes.
Wang attempts to further interpret Duchamp’s Given. His video begins with a huge stainless-steel doorway with two fist-sized holes emitting strong beams of light. Then the video shows a pond just after sunset where a plastic duck and toy goldfish float on the still surface. Nearby on the grass, a pink vibrator is pulsating. The camera moves forward and to the left, revealing two men and a woman lying naked on a pile of straw, parts of their bodies intertwined, touching each other as the woman raises a gas lamp into the air with her left hand.
For the first time, Wang is holding a solo exhibition in a purely commercial gallery. He explains that “my work has appropriated a metaphor,” attempting to elaborate on the meaning of Given—Du-champ didn’t provide any interpretation—in order to explore the essence of art.
“What is the essence of art? What challenges does contemporary art face? In this work, I utilize a rather exaggerated form of expression, but as the plot comes to an end, everything goes up in flames, creating the answer that there is no answer for these questions,” says Wang. On the video, viewers seem to be able to see everything, but when the frames are closely examined, it’s clear that they are unable to see the faces of the naked bodies—there’s a contradiction: they cannot see what they thought that they could.
Pioneering new media art
Born in 1963, Wang Jun-jieh is one of the pioneers of new media art in Taiwan.
Because of frail health during his childhood, he was at home recuperating for at least half of every term. His mother, a tailor by trade, tried protect his health, and didn’t pressure him too much to study. He even had freedom to choose his high school, ending up in Fu-Hsin Trade and Arts School where students didn’t have to suffer the pain of preparing for university entrance. The choice fitted to his artistic inclinations perfectly.
Being raised with educational values different from the mainstream of his generation, Wang gained outstanding results at high school, receiving the Hsiung Shih New Artists Award in his final year. Artist Chiang Hsun, one of the judges for the award, was entranced by Wang’s potential, and in the summer break before university started, invited him to give art lessons for the performers of the Cloud Gate Dance Theater of Taiwan.
This was the beginning of his connection with Taiwan’s mainstream art circle, producing his first video work The Variable Form II, in which the Cloud Gate dancers were the main focus. The work, one of the first art videos to be made in Taiwan, was a combination of conceptual imagery and impromptu dance, divided into four sections to pay tribute to four artists.
While Wang was studying fine arts at the Chinese Culture University, and around the time martial law was lifted, Taiwan was experiencing a wave of social liberation. Wang often cut classes to take part in social activism, beginning some underground-theater and emerging-film work, all the time developing connections with the Taiwanese avant-garde. His works from this period show diverse styles, and include a visual installation for an alternative theater program October. With others including artist Chen Chieh-jen, he also formed an art group to produce a series of joint exhibitions: Xi Rang.
Mocking consumerism
In 1989, after graduating, Wang went abroad to study at the Berlin University of the Arts in Germany. Six months later, he witnessed the fall of the Berlin Wall, and a few years after that experienced the process of the reunification of the East with capitalist West Germany. This was also the early phase of globalization, when the world economy was experiencing rapid development after shaking off the dampening effects of the Cold War.
In 1994, he returned to Taiwan and held a solo exhibition at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum: Little Mutton Dumplings for the Thirteenth Day. Art circles in Taiwan and Germany were amazed by Wang’s large-scale exhibition. Since that period, Wang has focused on three main styles: large-scale-series projects, virtual text, and artificial reality, crossing the boundary between artist and audience to ridicule and mock those who take the bait.
From this exhibition emerged a series of recipes and a set of little ceramic dumplings made for display. Advertisements imitating the crude style of the television channels for the Turkish community in Germany were produced that promised delicious dishes like those served in the Chinese imperial court—as long as you purchased the inexpensive recipes and followed the simple cooking instructions.
Direct mail advertising with a contact phone number went out. Many people indeed rang the office to inquire about the recipes, but were told: “I’m sorry, the recipes have all sold out, and they’re now out of print.” By stimulating people’s desire to buy something to the point where they couldn’t help but act, then directly cutting off supply, they created a group of keen prospective buyers who ended up extremely dissatisfied!
With success from his art, Wang became ever more daring and energetic—nothing was impossible. In 1997, he and his friends formed the Da Duo Studio. A textile company, the Hualong Group, showed an interest in working with the Da Duo Studio, and invited them to together create a fashion brand, eventually named as aaaaa. Wang became chief art director, initiating a close relationship between his art and business which continued over the next six years.
A prosperous era
Products in the aaaaa line used synthetic materials created by Hualong, adopting design elements featuring nylon and Velcro, similar to those used by leading fashion brand Prada. As they took Taiwan virtually by storm, a luxury flagship store was established in Taipei’s Xinyi Planned District, achieving a daily turnover of NT$1 million from this single store.
Wang was only 35, but he held enormous power and enjoyed seemingly unlimited creativity. He used the company’s range of textiles, still largely experimental, as his source materials, and the fashion advertising sets as part of his art, combining virtual plots with the reality of the aaaaa fashion store, at the same time producing associated T-shirts for sale.
This was a busy period with the release of a large number of works including the Neon Urlaub, Aura 52, and Microbiology Association series, covering a broad range of issues including class, consumption, desire, and environmental protection. During exhibitions, his work appeared on leaflets and hoardings, in TV advertisements and official websites, and was often indistinguishable from real marketing activities and commercial events using models.
However, when you reach the top, there is only one way to go.
In 2002, two sudden tragedies impacted upon Wang’s life. The roller-coaster ride of success after success suddenly came to an end, and his creative energies made a sudden change of direction.
David in Tiantang
There were two tragic events. His close friend and business partner, David, died suddenly from pancreatitis; then the aaaaa business was terminated.
Friend David and the business had been the two key elements of this very successful and prosperous period of his life. The loss of these twin treasures brought him suddenly face to face with an unprecedented challenge. In two years, Wang was to begin the gradual release of his Project David trilogy, the final work of which—David’s Paradise [Dawei Tiantang]—emerged seven years later in 2009. It gained the seventh Taishin Arts Award, raising his artistic achievement to new heights.
The work David’s Paradise comprises five large screens. A male walks into a room from an outdoor garden, his body changing into a semi-transparent floating state drifting through the doorway, study, living room, bathroom, and bedroom—into all the spaces of daily life. The body seems to exist everywhere, but neither the man’s facial appearance nor his bodily structure is ever completely revealed.
A floating pen writes by itself: “Dearest David, you have been gone for five years, but life goes on...,” the artist’s thoughts apparently appear in the text.
Chatting with Wang one evening at TNUA, he talked endlessly about his artistic ideas. But as the topic came around to David’s Paradise, the rhythm of his speech slowed and became more hesitant. Then he abruptly turned the conversation to video techniques.
So is David in heaven?
Wang answers slowly. The Chinese characters tian tang, though they can mean heaven, mean paradise here. Paradise is a concept of abstract space, a metaphor to imply the illusory happiness, space and desire in real life, as well as the relations between people. “In fact people are often not sure whether relationships between the self and other people or spaces are real or simply an illusion.”
Erotic objects
While he maintains clear memories of past prosperity and happiness, Wang has attempted to clarify those past relationships. His works have become visually more accurate with greater attention to detail, whereas the concepts have become more abstract and ambiguous, creating a rift between image and concept.
Project David signifies Wang’s return to the foundations of video art. After this project, he began a series of projects based on a theme derived from “Rrose Sélavy,” a pseudonym used by Duchamp who appears in a series of photos dressed as a woman.
Reviewing his past work, Wang has always been good at text construction and narrative. He possesses the ability to create new concepts, but in Project Rrose he clearly appropriates ideas from Duchamp. A larger and more authoritative text is used in Project Rrose, as if a shield is protecting the artist from being revealed. On the surface, Wang’s work attempts to directly question the nature of art, yet its text narrative is more subtle, as if he is building a wall to exclude the audience, leaving only the artist’s vague whispers to provide clues to what he’s doing.
What is the artist actually attempting to express, but hesitating to do so? Perhaps a message can be glimpsed through the almost neglected (by the public) Erotic Objects series, one part of Project Rrose: Love and Death.
Wang says that this series is also an appropriation of Duchamp’s inspiration from erotic objects. Wang uses 12 various objects in the work both erotic and non-erotic, such as perfume, a gas lamp, and a vibrator, but defines them all as erotica in an attempt to go beyond the norm, leading the definition of each object towards desire.
“The current Project Rrose exhibition is the second of the trilogy, and in the third part I intend to explore the issue of androgyny,” says the artist. The conversation had reached the point of discussing the theme of desire. Suddenly Wang hesitated, and then speaking quickly explained that “many people may wonder whether the issue of androgyny is going to explore gender identity. But this is in fact merely a metaphor. It attempts to explore an essence of nature that many people have in their minds and are unable to escape from.”
In Project Rrose, the audience can feel the artist’s presence only at a distance—the artist places himself within the work without being revealed. This barrier separating the artist from his audience tends to disappoint viewers despite the apparent perfection of the work itself. As a result, the audience becomes more eager to listen attentively to the artist’s inner feelings—well hidden behind the barrier.
Should art be like this? Once you fall into art, the desire for art grows endlessly. Every time you feel satisfaction with a work, there always appears a yearning for more—more to seek. How can we comprehend this fundamental desire for art? Perhaps every seeker of art should be like the artist: constantly questioning themselves to more explicitly explore their inner selves.
(August 2011 Taiwan Panorama p.116-124/tr. by Geoff Hegarty and Sophia Chen)
|
|
