Recently I moved to the south of Taiwan for work reasons. When compared to the dark, damp climate of the north, the south of the island is bathed in often bathed in brilliant sunlight which can be very uplifting. Having grown up in central and southern Taiwan, it felt almost as if the sunlight and warmth were calling me back to the days of childhood, a time when the very air seemed to be filled with health, harmony and joy, and it was easier to believe in the make-believe of a society based on “collective happiness.”

Moreover, I have also recently observed this “sense of happiness” in the pictures of old political magazines when wandering around local flea markets. I am particularly intrigued at the prospect of revisiting such “perfect moments.” In fact I have been surprised at the extent to which these long faded magazines have unconsciously awoken images buried in my memory. Could it be that the “beautiful spirit” that has followed me around for so long is my sole source of internal peace? It suddenly occurred to me that the spiritual support that has sustained so much of my creative work remains the physical remnants of party political power. Despite the fact that I have already transformed this into an artistic form, it is difficult to hide its “dressed-up Utopian” nature.

This solo exhibition is in essence a criticism of my own participation in the creation of such a “dressed-up Utopia.” I also wanted to drag out of me the “beautiful spirit” that has resided there so long, making it impossible for “her” to hide any longer.

“Beautiful spirit” approximates to the language of rhetoric in as much as I enjoy playing with words. I have for many years satirized the “illusory identity” I myself allowed to exist, but of course that also signifies how much I now need to leave this “illusory identity” behind and reanalyze the illusion that lies behind it. In other words, I have to dissolve myself into an identity that has already been constructed in order to better grasp what is “coming.”

Each time political slogans in Taiwan and produced, whether: “A Better Tomorrow” or “With Beautiful Dreams Comes Hope,” they never fail to move people, evidence of a collective consciousness that at a minimum highlights two distinct phenomena: 1) A slavish group conformity to the Confucian ethical code; 2) The collectivist sentimentality of an agrarian society. These phenomena reflect the fact that Taiwan remains a conservative society largely lacking in modernity and individual consciousness. The KMT’s electoral victory last year is perhaps the best example of the restoration of conservative power. In point of fact, many people do not believe the KMT has a future but prefer to be soothed by the “beautiful spirit” of the past. They continue to believe in that beautiful vision rather than accept the bankruptcy of reality and a DPP that no longer offers the public hope.

All the images in this exhibition were collected over the last two years, as I wandered around local flea markets and second hand bookstores, and then edited using computer software. It took some time to sift through the nearly a thousand images and select those that best capture the collective illusion of Taiwan’s past (perhaps still ongoing). The whole process is similar to the way in which these images stirred something deep down inside me. If I had not found myself in rural south Taiwan and been given the opportunity to re-experience the political atmosphere of my childhood, then I would never have been unable to force myself see that the Utopian origins of my creative work remains an illusion deliberately created under conditions of political competition.