文 / Main Trend Gallery
With an artistic career spanning more than 20 years, Chen Hui-Chiao (1964-) has exhibited at home and abroad, attracting attention far and wide. Having participated in international biennials, touring and exchange exhibitions, artist-in-residence programmes and held solo exhibitions, she is one of the most active and seasoned artists with worldwide recognition in Taiwanese contemporary art.
From intuitive and sensual works characterized by a poetic use of multi-media, Chen seems to have gradually moved on to rational geometric forms. Her artistic ideas are derived from the exploration of the subconscious, such as the role of dreams in the unconscious as theorized by Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), and meditations on the connections between cosmic phenomena such as the movement of the stars and the human condition. Thus, one can find suggestions of existence and alienation, subtlety and sharpness, grief and rebirth in her works. Like a mirror that reflects the conflict between sensual needs and rational restraint, her works resonate with tension, inviting viewers’ identification and appealing to their subconscious. Not to be easily defined or catalogued as feminine aesthetics or feminist art, they are responses to different dimensions of life.
Objects as signifiers and concepts
Chen Hui-Chiao uses ready-made materials as structural elements, employing the objects and materials as signifiers so that they become carriers of conceptual ideas. As Spanish artist Antoni Tàpies (1923~) said, “My wish is that we might progressively lose our confidence in what we think we believe and the things we consider stable and secure, in order to remind ourselves of the infinite number of things still waiting to be discovered” and “…The artist has to make the viewer understand that his world is too narrow, he has to open up to new perspectives”. Materials can speak. For instance, in the work Amorphous Company II shown at the exhibition “The Gravity of The Immaterial” at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei in 2001, is the cotton heavier or the ping-pong ball? The soft cotton contains air and its character is insubstantial, while the round ping-pong ball and its surface are substantial. When an insubstantial surface meets a substantial one, which is heavier and which is lighter? The spatial dimension of installation art is also a component of the artist’s work. Behind the fixed form, how do you define the potential signification and conceptual idea of the object? When we see a work, we perceive elements that correspond to the logic in our consciousness, and our mind completes the figures according to gestalt laws. (N.B. the picture is completed in the viewer’s mind. The artist achieves this by relying on the laws of gestalt perception.) Chen once said: “…History and the astonishing expansion of our material knowledge and power do not constitute the essence of civilization. On the contrary, the balance between material and spiritual development has been lost…”. Thus, “how do we face the world of everyday life with wisdom, experience all sensations that can be experienced, and accurately capture everything intuitively without being influenced by external pressure or reality? This is what I try to achieve and my greatest challenge.”
She continuous to experience the deep spirituality in objects through her senses, and manifests the guiding principle of contemporary art – “the precedence of the concept”- in her works.
The Minimal Spirit of Abstract Art
The recent works of Chen Hui-Chiao feature a “circle” whether as a form or a symbol. Whether it compensates for the “not rounded” part of the self in her personal subconscious, or suggests the movement of celestial bodies in the universe, she consistently uses this idea. The use of ping-pong balls as a material runs through her works produced since the new millennium. As defined by abstract artist Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944), the circle is “(1) the most modern form, but asserts itself unconditionally, (2) a precise but inexhaustible variable, (3) simultaneously stable and unstable, (4) simultaneously loud and soft, (5) a single tension that carries countless tensions within it. The circle is the synthesis of the greatest oppositions.” Geometry refers to the origins of the universe: the origins of the universe are abstract, consisting of points (such as planets), lines (such as the orbit of the stars or light), planes (such as space) and colour. The forms are reduced to the most basic geometric shapes. Simple and bright colours are used as metaphors for abstract feelings, and minimal forms express the harmonious artistic spirit. These geometric qualities and symbols are more or less imprinted by Chen Hui-Chiao in the exhibition “The Geometry of Passion”.
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