text by Hung Yi-Chen
“How to paint?” seems to be the first conceptual question that a novice would encounter when he/she begins painting. After that comes the inquiry into “what to paint?”. For a painter, the method of painting is worth noting because it is central to the core concept. In the past, the affirmation and visualization of a painting have often been determined by signified forms or symbols. These forms or symbols are in turn recognised or confirmed through the viewer’s experiences as they are remembered. Thus, when it comes to the discussion of compositional structure, the artwork’s identity may be better verified when the “pictorial surface” is clarified. As for the outcome practiced by the “method of painting,” it is a record of the painting process.
Is it possible to revisit painting as if it never existed before? Through the subjectification of painting, this artist’s intention is to approach “painting” as an expressive subject matter as well as a tool. That is, to see a piece of painting as material that carries an objecthood which embeds its own intention. In other words, the “intention” is attached to the material in the execution process, transforming the materials into a conceptual medium. The artwork completed in this method comes closer to a painting than sculpture, yet deprived of the functionality of a “picture plane,” expressing some kind of “surface” quality. Minimalism means to boil everything down to a phenomenal condition, using industrial materials and techniques in place of “authenticity” crafted by the artist; hence the declaration that “painting is dead” by Donald Judd (1928-1994) in 1965. As a painter, I intend to express through casting, making two out of one piece. The dialectic of “authentic vs. fake” between the original and the reproduction is at once a debate over “originality/creativity.” After re-placing the original and the reproduction by means of transfer and transpose, an alternative expression of “surface” is made possible, and it highlights the identity of the “pictorial surface” after re-creation.
Transpose series continues with the previous reproductive methods. I have initially replaced the hand-crafted “original” with industrial materials and techniques. This time I work with the basic materials of painting, namely, the stretcher, the canvas and the paint. Through paint, I mean to explore the functionality of painting, the expression of the surface and, what remains of the pictorial surface after its “painterliness” is taken away? What is the original condition before the “pictorial surface” is formed? In the end, the emblematic and abstract structures remaining on the canvas turn into the most prominent forms, and give the work its content and spirit.
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