text by Chang Ching-Wen
1.
The concepts represented by the word "landscape" are numerous and diverse, and the meaning that it represents is constantly changing. In her discussion of landscapes and contemporary art, French scholar Catherine Grout first explains the history of "landscapes." In the West, in contrats to art history or the history of thought, there was no word relating to landscapes until the Dutch landschap appeared in the late 15th century. According to Grout's research, the landscapes that appeared in Western art prior to the first half of the 15th century obviously had a different meaning than the one we currently acknowledge, see, and understand. Before the word "landscape" appeared in Europe, such paintings only depicted "places which produced activity," with artists showing greater attention to bringing out a place or story in their landscape paintings than to the depiction of nature. Grout maintains that the means by which landscapes are expressed relates to the artist's way of seeing and thinking about the world, and landscape pieces are not only a work of art, they are the concrete results of the arrangement of these ideas and emotional pillars for people.[1]
Chen Chien-Jung’s paintings have always been associated with urban civilization or industrial ruins, and most of them tend towards “incomplete” or “lo-fi” interpretations.[2] Critics often feel his works are reflections of the decrepit or even violent side of cities, bringing out a certain fascinating quality through the use of beautiful color and arrangement of uniform lines.
In an era of overdevelopment, imagery of dilapidation or fracturing can easily conjure up nostalgia for the countryside and arouse cultural feelings imagination, forming a perceptual viewing experience. Looking at Chen Chien-Jung's works, particularly a series of post-2007 paintings named Landscape, all contain suggestions of their locale as viewing clues, and locations that echo Catherine Grout's " emotional dependence."The possibility that these pictures can be viewed as landscapes also explains precisely why the empty houses or two-dimensional buildings in Chen’s paintings attract our gaze; they do not actually exist, yet linger in the perception of every viewer with experience of cities.
Urban historian Joel Kotkin believes that the experience of city life is universal, regardless of race, climate, or geographic location. He quotes from the diary of 16th century conquistador Bernal Diaz del Castillo, who writes that although Tenochtitlan (now Mexico City) was a completely unfamiliar city, it was only superficially different from Seville, Antwerp, Constantinople, or other European cities. Today, such commonalities can still be observed in major cities throughout the world. Cities operate similarly around the globe, and even share common architectural styles. “Then there is the visceral "feel" of the city almost everywhere- the same quickening of pace on a busy street, an informal marketplace, or a freeway interchange, the need to create notable places, the sharing of unique civic identity."[3]
This idea does not only exist in Kotkin's view of history. Richard Sennett, interested in the study of the relationship between the human body and urban spaces, has also found that the structure of modern cities has long involved straight roadways, rapid and unobstructed transportation routes, eliminating the work of getting around and all impediments to efficiency, including interesting architecture and city appearance so that the drivers will not be distracted by the street-side landscape. As the velocity of travel has created new geographic possibilities for settlement, Sennett laments, “Space has thus become a means to the end of pure motion,” and “The physical condition of the traveling body reinforces the sense of disconnection from space.” [4]
Perhaps it is this potential fracturing that arouses the interest of contemporary painters in the structures that surround their bodies. The works of Chen Chien-Jung are a highly representative example. These paintings call upon and stir a certain common sense of space- or, perhaps, sense of the urban- possessed by all with experience of cities, and add to the current relationship between people's bodies and space. Although he has never painted the scenery of any particular community, nor attempted to represent a specific building or house, certain forms are clearly and confidently brought out in the pictures. They appear to be buildings, or sculptures shaped like houses, or may even really be forms from certain other artists' works. These objects easily attract the eye, further drawing the viewer into the space to explore the pure appeal of lines or colors that exist beneath these forms.
Chen Chien-Jung's earlier works, such as 1997's In the Park, already displayed his technique of using buildings as the primary line structures in the pictures. The tableau has the corner of a stainless steel stage, the crisscrossed well-executed straight lines appearing on the relatively disorderly paint on the base photograph. The sharp, fine light blue lines, and decorative lines painted after masking the work in tape, correspond to the image in the photograph at the base layer of the work, the scene of an outdoor performance. The line and color composition techniques revealed in this piece were extended to become the typical structure of Chen’s later works, although he stopped using photographic images after this, shifting to the creation of quasi-spatial scenes entirely through the layering of paint.
The 2006 Park depicts the corner of a car park. As the viewer casts his eyes on this enclosed, deep black and gray space, the lines draw the gaze to an obstruction in the foreground. The fine black lines imply physical space, while white lines brightly intersect with them to create a hint of the ground, extending to form one axis of a perspective drawing. These white lines also confuse the viewer's reflexive visual judgment, allowing the sightline to pierce through the ground and extend downward. The use of color in the picture does away with the gloom of constant grey and black, with the blue patches of color rhythmically stretching out the distance above with changes in the space. Many of the later Landscape series hold a similar appeal, but with the scenes having shifted to the outside of the structures, the landscape presented in an upward-looking or panoramic view. Included among these is 2007’s Landscape 09, uses incompletely covered color blocks to give the building shape formed by the ink lines a different voice-part spatial feel, the dual effect of the lines and color creating a rich false space experience. Landscape 10 (2007), by being more automatic and spontaneous in nature, brings out the emotional power of plane painting, with numerous voices tangled together, a thin, transparent swath of aquamarine rushing upward around a white form, gracefully breaking through the restraints of the grey and white color areas to either side. In 2009’s Landscape 24, Landscape 33, and Landscape 34 bring a more concrete architectural appearance to their images, the imagined buildings supported by the lines broken one after another by the application of color. Within the crowded pictures, a few eye-catching orange lines or patches shine like fire, becoming the focal point of each landscape. Numbers 23, 27, 35, 36, and 37 of the Landscape series, new works from after 2009, make a single structure the center of the image; The forms are oppressively heavy, while soft, highly transparent colors cover the picture, softening the dense feeling of the square central objects. These immense objects stand alone, cold and isolated; like the eye of the viewer, people can only walk around them on the outside, sizing up the relationship between them.
Some works not part of the Landscape series, including White Building 02 (2003), Grey Building (2007), Grey Object (2009), and Sky Blue (2009), also include clear architectural forms. 2001’s Transmission 01-2 may be seen as the forerunner to this kind of piece; the form covered in blue on the left side of the picture, the later complete covering of the flat part revealing the surface line changes of buildings and large sculptures. The picture also builds a foundation of lines, on top of which color is applied in layers. Comparison between the structural objects easily leads to a judgment of the images. The color has been applied arbitrarily, occasionally including hints at a sense of space, but more often existing only as an abstract design.
3.
Informational diagrams, as purely functional objects, could be considered the blandest form of artistic representation. Elevation drawings of buildings or depictions of houses use numerous straight lines conforming with the logic of perspective to represent the horizon, walls, and supports, corresponding to the tidy charcoal pencil lines, produced by masking the work with tape; 2008’s Untitled 08-6 and Untitled 08-2 are the best examples. The artist employs numerous straight lines, rarely occurring in natural landscapes, which continually intersect and shift, creating landscapes with strong urban connotations. Within the seemingly unemotional structure of straight lines, the covering and crossing of color displays the transparency of acrylic paint, and breaking free of formerly familiar spaces. After modification, ordinary outdoor landscapes retain only a part of their original form, finally returning to your lines and color. Although some images appear to be the result of careful planning, they were completed referring only to items the artists had at hand, which become personalized and obscure signs of his work.
Chen’s paintings have become a portal to the reestablishment of the relationship between space and the body for those born in this era of excessive urban sprawl. As cities become increasingly similar in appearance, and as the bodies moving through cities are no longer keenly aware of space, each landscape that Chen opens up to the viewer in his works, in addition to being a response to the present mood of the city, also leads the viewer on a journey of unfamiliar visual experiences. Outside the lines supporting each indistinct form, vague images of sky, sea, clouds or trees emerge from the indistinct splashes of color, rational visual experiences asserting themselves within landscapes that confuse the vision or differ wildly from reality. The viewer may at times be convinced that he is looking at a forest, the night horizon, or an object in the middle of the sea or under a misty morning sky, but these may very possibly be the result of unconscious projection of existing visual experiences or visualizations of classical landscapes and not necessarily the landscapes that Chen's works are intended to reflect.
When our gaze leaves the canvas and returns to the carbon copy scenery of the city, will we still be able to see the desolation and beauty amidst it?
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[1] Grout, Catherine. Chongfan fengjing- dangdai yishu de dijing zaixian (Returning to Landscapes: Representations of Land in Contemporary Art) Translated by Huang Jinju. Taipei: Yuan-Liou Publishing Co, 2009. Pg. 14-17.
[2] YuWei, “Yuedu Chen Jianrong de huihua” (Reading the Paintings of Chen Chien-Jung) in Chen Chien-Jung: Selection 2001-2006. Taipei: Ke-Yuan Gallery, 2006. Pg. 4.
[3] Kotkin, Joel. Chengshi de lishi (The City: A Global History) Translated by Xie Peiwen. Taipei: Rive Gauche Cultural Enterprise, 2006. Pg. 29-30
[4] Sennet, Richard. Ruoti yu shitou: Xifang wenming zhong de renlei shenti yu chengshi (Flesh and Stone: The Body and the City in Western Civilization). Translated by Huang Yuwen. Taipei: Rye Field Publishing Company, 2005. Pg. 22-23.
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