文 / Lee Wei-Jing
This is my world, I am in control. Whatever I believe is true, whatever I do not believe in is but fantasy.
At the extremity of any beautiful dream lies harm and destruction. The art of Chen Hui-chiao has consistently hovered somewhere between dreams and tense anxiety, based on a deep and lasting belief that the opposite of joy is pain. The flip side of the dreamlike roses, clouds and oceans used in Chen's art is needles, thorns, restraint and the disappearance of pain. Faith stands at a distance and stares back at us, but in the process of this pursuit we learn that the beautiful landscapes encountered on our journey could be imaginary; that free floating clouds are in fact small collectibles in a box and that to grip the bright red roses tightly is to be pricked by thorns and bleed.
Chen Hui-chiao says: “Love lies behind all creative work”
For many years now, Chen Hui-chiao in her role at IT Park Gallery has come across as unapproachable. She is known for speaking her mind and for ignoring customers who annoy her. Her long thin face has long seemed incapable of even the most basic courtesies.
As a young girl Chen was introverted but her character aggressive and she was often beaten by her mother for producing sub-standard homework. The mother demanded nothing less than perfection from her eldest daughter, but Chen was stubborn and even when beaten refused to accept defeat. Instead she used her strength of spirit to build a sanctuary inside her head – her dreams. Night after night she would take refuge in this world of dreams and watch as the prophecies made there came true. All these years later as an artist, Chen Hui-chiao's most important motivation is a desire to transform those dreamscapes into works of art.
“I often dream about people and the net day I meet them. I dream that there is a leak in the house in a certain place and the next day there is or I dream of a certain phrase or sentence and the next day I read it somewhere. This is something I have experienced since I was a little girl.” Chen says she has been aware that her dreams provide certain clues about her life since junior high school. She has not read Freud’s theories on psychology, including things about self allusions or the existence of dreams and reality. Rather she has reached such conclusions from the accumulated experiences of her own life.
Chen says that each and every day dreams provide her with the chance to understand herself better and to discover new things. She has also cried hysterically in dreams and woken up anxious without explanation and once even dreamed of drowning: “I consider dreams to be a good for me. I want only to decide what my life will be like and starting with dreams it is either lifting myself up or falling down.”
For many years now Chen Hui-chiao has repeatedly dreamed about hidden treasure at the bottom of the ocean, a dream she considers an allusion to life and art.
“I am swimming at the bottom of an unbelievably ancient ocean and surrounded by ancient shells and a thicket of seaweed. Suddenly I see a bright light somewhere in the distance. I swim towards the light and find precious stones infused with some kind of magical energy radiating all kinds of different colors - a miracle of life and the source of light. I stop in front of it, instinctively knowing that as soon as I reach out my hand the precious stone will disappear. I wrestle with the desire to touch the stone and gaze at that glittering secret.”
In her dreams, Chen Hui-chiao often finds herself reaching out for something she wants that disappears. This unchanging attitude and choice has been evident in the artist's work for many years in her complex feelings and strong sense of anxiety with regards life, truth, love and faith.
“I know that these things exist only in a certain state, that when we move to own them they crumble into pieces.”
After graduating from the Department of Art at You De High School, Chen Hui-chiao went to work for an animation company where she drew illustrations. In 1984, at the age of just 20, Chen began to feel like a zombie in a job that was so repetitive it all but brought her to tears. It was at around that time that she visited Spring Art Gallery with friends to view a solo exhibition by Chang Yung-tsun. When they arrived the artist was standing there surrounded by people asking him questions. Chen who was who just happened to bring some of her own illustration work to the exhibition was in two minds whether to show them to Chang or not, but finally she plucked up the courage. Unexpectedly, the artist called over his artist friends Tsong Pu and Lin Shou-yu to look at the work and they engaged in animated conversation. At the time, Tsong Pu had only recently returned from Spain and out of the blue asked Chen if he could keep her paintings. On hearing this Chen Hui-chiao was so excited that such a well known artist expressed an interest in her work that she happily handed him the illustrations. After this encounter, Chen became both a friend and a student of Tsong Pu and Lin Shou-yu.
Chen Hui-chiao is not one of those artists who received formal academic training, other than basic tuition in calligraphy, watercolors and sketching when she attended art classes at junior high school. Nevertheless, she has learned much from the many years she has spent around artists and is a prolific reader. These factors have allowed her to study contemporary art and to think long and to reflect at length about what constitutes artistic creativity. As a result, Chen has employed the formal language of academia as precisely as possible as she searches for balance between meaning and the different forms of art. When Chen Hui-chiao first took an interest in art, despite the flowering of creative ideas she remained a little insecure and has said herself that whenever she discussed art at that time she often found herself gripped by uncertainty. It was Tsong Pu who told her: “You must have confidence” and that simple suggestion ultimately encouraged her to address her people more directly. After receiving such encouragement from Tsong Pu, in 1986 Chen signed-up to attend a SOCA art cam and that marked the beginning of her formal research into the world of art. In the autumn of 1988, a group of friends including Chen Hui-chiao, Liu Ching-tang, Hung Wen-hao, Tsong Pu officially established “IT Park Gallery.” Their most earnest wish at that time was to provide a space where modern artists could meet, exchange ideas and display their work. In the two decades since then, Chen's artistic career and personal life have been inextricably intertwined with IT Park. She has been the one unchanging element at the gallery where most of her art has been shown. Chen is also deeply involved with administrative work and keeping in touch with artists, indeed her work at IT Park over the last 20 years has made her an integral part of the history and culture of the gallery.
Chen Hui-chiao says that when she first started producing art, friends such as Huang Wen-hao commented that despite having a scary exterior, deep down she actually was terrified of art. Chen learned a great deal about technique from closely observing how the artists around her utilized space and different materials. In the early days she spent much time producing small-scale “object art” and installation pieces because she wanted to be first able to precisely manipulate these small works. It was only 5-6 years ago that Chen's art pieces started to get noticeably larger.
From the late 1980's to the mid 1990's Chen Hui-chiao became relatively well known in local art circles, but her first real solo exhibition did not come until “A Separate Reality” in 1995. Prior to that date, Chen took part in over 30 group exhibitions both at home and overseas. In 1997, she held her second solo exhibition “Smile of the Skeptic”. Both of these exhibitions were held at IT Park Gallery and were a testament to the clear application of the artist's distinctive language and use of images. In this context Chen took the most defenseless and soft elements of her work and pushed them to extremes of danger and anxiety through images. In so doing the artist has constantly searched for the limits of that critical point, in an attempt to take these anxieties and hone them to a precise tension.
From “You're the rose I'm the Needle” in 1993 to the pieces “The Dreamer and the Dreamed” and “Monolith without Gravity” shown in her first solo exhibition, Chen Hui-chiao has frequently used the combination of roses and needles. In one the bright red roses are embroidered onto a wall in another they appear as living roses from a distance but bloody made up eviscerated corpses from up close. Chen is also adept at using stainless steel, acrylic and cold, sharp cutting methods to capture or frame white feathers and flowers and it is hard to know whether her use of aggressive sharp edges embraces or traps her soft and gentle wild imaginings. In the “Smile of the Skeptic” produced in 1997, the artist utilized the same approach but on a much grander scale. Even though the production costs of the display exceeded her ability to pay, she ploughed ahead anyway, showing such works as “Smile”, “Within Me, Without Me in Space, Within Space”, “Flame in the Air” etc.
In these works there were not only roses and needles but Chen Hui-chiao also made several large square glass boxes that she filled with water, with pictures of clouds flying at the bottom. In some of the tanks Chen placed rumble fish for views to watch as they swam around. The dreamlike world at the bottom of the water all but filled the entire exhibition arena and it is unclear whether the clouds are reflected images from the water and light or two dimensional pictures that have been dropped into the water that are now “flying.”
Neither the materials used by Chen Hui-chiao nor her expressive approach, which tends in the direction of minimalism were anything particularly original in the field of art. Although Chen used this approach a lot regardless of the opinions of others, what was of particular interest was the way in which her works truly moved people. This emotional connection came from a feminine attention to detail and sensitivity and an overlapping and repetitive emotional state of mind. This is a testament to the tension inherent in her non-stop anxiety, completely unrestrained, bold, assured and stretching out into the distance.
In 1998 Chen Hui-chiao's piece “Then Sleep, My love…”included a large white fluffy bed, with an exquisitely carved headrest and legs, evocatively calling to viewers to lie down and a rest. Only on moving a little closer do they find that the bed is covered with thousands of small needles. The surprise brings the viewer back to his/her senses and the realization that to lie down on the bed is to bleed and hurt.
What is of note is that the first thing most people think of when seeing this piece for the first time is sexual repression. Connecting the imaginings of a bed, resting, seduction, pain, blood, the previous large scale use of roses and the penetrating image associated with needles - such “sexual allusions” are frequently the subject of conversations on the works of Chen Hui-chiao. Intriguingly perhaps, the work “Sleep My Love” is one of the pieces most often used in invitational exhibitions over the last two years or so and it also makes a particularly deep impression on viewers.
Not surprisingly perhaps given this context, Chen is often asked her opinion on the “sexual allusions” or “sexual repression” in her work and her reaction is to invariably disagree with such interpretations.
“I have never taken sex as my starting point in producing art, but whenever anyone reads about the bed full of needles and specimen roses the direct response is always that the piece is somehow related to sexual anxiety, regardless of anything I write myself,.”
Chen Hui-chiao says that the reason she chooses the elements she habitually uses such as roses, needles, feathers, cotton etc is that in her mind these are all “beautiful and sharp things.” “I want only to simultaneously express the two extremes of comfort and anxiety seen in beauty.”
Chen notes: “Of course from the perspective of a certain school of psychology sex lies at the root of everything, but I would say that to view everything in that way is both too simple and far too complex. Anxiety is absolutely part of my work and I admit that that emotion is closely related to love. If viewers want to focus on the fact that sex is part of love and as such that anxiety about sex is part of the work then that is up to them.”
Chen Hui-chiao says that she has had three important teachers in her life; Lin Shou-yu, Tsong Pu and Chen Shih-ming. In the early years as she struggled to find her way as an artist they discussed many things with her including artistic knowledge and perception and offered three completely different models of artistic genius.
Lin Shou-yu is the sort of person who is hard on himself and other people, because he is very clear about what he wants. Lin is a great teacher succinct and to the point. Tsong Pu on the other hand always sounds unclear no matters what is being discussed, but his words reflected on for a while are inevitably wise and knowing. It was Tsong Pu who showed Chen see the chaotic nature of life and how best to preserve ones innocence in such an environment. Chen Shih-ming has a tendency to force himself and those around him to think more clearly about things with questions like why are you involved with art, and other than art what sort of person do you want to be?
Chen Hui-chiao spends most of her life not at home but at IT Park Gallery.
IT Park nourishes her passion for art and has taught her much about life. Despite hearing many rumors during the course of her work there, the gallery itself is a source of inspiration for Chen. Her private feelings are kept at home where she lives alone.
“I am always in the process of organizing memories and dreams.” Chen notes that she spends a lot of time gazing into space and that regularly just can't be bothered speaking to other people, so much so that the place she lives has no television. She attaches particular importance to the time she spends “at home” staring into space, because as soon as she ventures outside, even if it is to IT Park: “My frame of mind is one of having to be ready for combat at a moment notice.”
“Why do I think that way? Because I am especially worried or scared about that fact that I do not know what will happen one second from now.” She says “As a result I am completely unable to relax or take a break outside or allow myself to revel in this or that atmosphere. Sometimes I think that I need to live on my own because I am afraid that I just don't have the ability to live even with one other person.”
Chen says that she enjoys the time she spend fantasizing and that she is not particularly enamored of the real world. Even now as a grown woman she still finds it impossible to compromise with reality.
Chen maintains that she does not spend her time reading books about religion and philosophy. Since she was a young girl she has been an avid fan of comic books for young girls. She has always been particularly attracted by the strange complexities of love as portrayed in those stories. Even today she still does not want to let go of the way in which young girls conceive of love. “Perhaps it would be better to say that what I really liked about comic books for young girls was their mythical portrayal of emotion.”
Chen Hui-chiao only recognizes her devotion to innocence and romance when safely ensconced at home. For the last 13 years at IT Park Gallery she has remained detached and impartial, watching different artists come and go but remaining direct and honest. However, her own home is filled with things collected over the years; shells, dried flowers and lace-bordered tablecloths, all items that give the artist a sense of warmth.
“I think of my self an analyzer of dreams. If I immerse myself in my dream world then I become a chaser of dreams.” Chen says that the biggest difference between the two is whether a person has faith or not: “I can't explain what my faith is, and in fact I frequently ask myself what constitutes real faith. But I do believe that that there is a faith somewhere in front of me and that that is “truth.”
Chen searches for her own truth in her dreams, using art as both a testament and process in that pursuit. She believes that this is exactly why faith is so important because without it people floating in dreams “are in nothing more than an empty mumbling state.”
Chen Hui-chiao is earnest in saying that over the years both she and her work have undergone major emotional change.
“One's emotional state is enriched, and prejudices reduced. My emotions are far more vital as a result and my moods simpler.” Chen observes “As a result I believe that the art I produce is purer.”
“But sometimes I cannot stop myself from thinking that seen from this perspective my anxiety comes from my own masochistic indulgences.
Chen likens her own situation to that of the little mermaid of legend, particularly in the way that she gives of her feelings without asking for anything in return.
The little mermaid fell in love with a prince and when his ship sank at sea saved him from the wreckage. In order to be able to walk in the world of men and be with the prince she decides to give up her beautiful voice in return for human legs. But having lost her voice the little mermaid is unable to make the prince understand that she is the one who saved him or the depth of her love for him. She can do nothing but watch helplessly as the prince marries a princess from a neighboring kingdom and then she transforms into bubbles that disappear into the ocean.
“If it was me, I would do exactly the same thing.”
In the past Chen Hui-chiao has said that love is the motivation behind her art, but isn't the love of the little mermaid a fantasy entirely of her own making? Chen says that when she likes a person an intellectual connection is more important than sex, what she desires is the sense of a shared tacit understanding between two people.
“Moreover, I do not think that once a tacit understanding is established it disappears in a moment, rather I believe that once it occurs it continues.”
“This is where I am at my most romantic.” Chen notes that she lives a very simple life and is soon bored of reality, perhaps because she does not know how to play games. “In this sense all romance takes place only in my heart.” |
