text by Sophie Mclntyre
My works are simulated in order to enter peoples' daily lives, to seek indeterminacy in the indeterminacy of reality and illusion. -- Wang Jun-Jieh
One of Taiwan's foremost multi-media artists, Wang Jun-Jieh has been experimenting with electronic visual media for more than a decade. In his works, Wang uses video and computer technology to explore the relationship between reality and illusion, fact and fiction. As an artist who also works in the advertising industry, Wang is acutely aware of the power of technology and the mass media and its potential to manipulate and simulate reality: this is his point of departure. The artist transforms the photographic image/art work into a commodity for mass consumption, using popular channels of advertising, such as billboards, brochures and the internet, to promote his simulated products and services. In doing so, Wang examines the psychology of consumer culture, and the interactive relationship between the producer and the consumer.
In 1994-95, Wang created "Little Mutton Dumplings for the Thirteenth Day", to focus on the concept of consumption within the context of class, power, and the mass media. The artist prepared a number of delicacies once enjoyed by Emperors and the aristocracy in China, such as "Special Tiger's Testicle Soup", a favourite of Empress Tz-Shi. As a parody on Chinese peoples' insatiable appetite for food , and for the latest consumer product, Wang re-creates these delicacies for Taiwan's modern capitalists who can now order these sumptous computer-generated dishes via the internet.
In the following years, Wang created "Neon Uriaub" (1997), which was essentially a fictitious travel agency that organized packages for tourists who wished to visit "exotic places" such as war zones in the Balkan Peninsula; the Taiwan Straits where one could watch torpedoes being fired from a US fighter plane; or witness "historic events" such as the 1997 Hong Kong handover. These various packages were advertised on the internet as fliers which the artist distributed to his audience. After only one week all tours were fully booked! Wang not only makes a satirical comment on peoples' morbid fascination with warfare, but also on the ever expanding tourism industry in Taiwan which devises travel packages promising "an escape from everyday life".
With "Aura 52" (1998), Wang explores the relationship between physical reality, fantasy and memory Through computer technology the artist reproduces photographic images he has taken, or collected from calendars and tourist brochures advertising overseas holiday destinations. Wang recalls that when growing up, the most popular images reproduced in Taiwanese calendars typically represented picturesque European and Japanese landscapes which, for many people living in Taiwan's increasingly industrialised and urbanised society, signified an idyllic world: a flight of fantasy.
In his works, Wang creates a variety of simulated environments which have no geographic reference or time frame. For instance, the photographic images of "The Himalayas" or "The Amazon"' which are also part of this series, could have been taken anywhere (when in fact they are in Taiwan); while in "Aura 52" the sheep are grazing in what appears to be the glaring sun, although the dark shadows in the foreground suggest otherwise. On closer examination, the viewer will detect in these works artificial light and exaggerated tonal colour contrasts which transform these seemingly familiar, stereotypical images into an altered "reality". Wang provokes the viewer to question what is "reality": Is it what we see or how we see it?
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