文 / Lin Hsiao-Yun
Older, well-known representative works of CHEN Hui-Chiao include dried roses with pins stuck in them, down beds with hidden nails, and installation works that integrate images with ready-made objects such as cotton and ping-pong balls. These artistic symbols are perhaps metaphors for completely different concepts, such as pain/sacrifice, self-defense/self-torture, or love/dreams. For Chen, the direct experience of the moment and physical work she puts into her art are her core concerns. As an expert in weaving dreams and telling stories, Chen believes that, “all stories were originally inner feelings; stories are simply the truth in the here and now.” Recently Chen has been combining mysterious, symbolic text and images into the same spaces, creating an almost lover’s language that is somehow also a sparse, cold poetic dreamland.
In her own words in 2002, Chen provided some of her own ideas on dreams, “How do you face the colored cultural assault in modern times? ‘Dreams’ become a kind of potential automatic mechanism… I let myself loose in dreams, from one instant to the next… In the timeless abyss one can find form and sound…”
The preceding passage could be said to succinctly express the artist’s diligent hard work in expressing the ‘purity’ and ‘truth’ of real life – the existence of a kind of pure, clear light. This is a place without impurities in which one can roam freely within, or float above. It seems as if the artist is constantly journeying between real life and the pure truth she seeks, continuously spending a great deal of effort, attention and care on the pure light that can never exist in reality.
So what exactly is this pure light that the artist is so deeply mesmerized with? Perhaps we could generalize it for the moment as the common feelings we find in myths, dreams and poetry. Chen’s Here and Now series of works continues this pursuit. With its major elements hailing from myths and traditional totemic images, such as Pictish Wolf, Serpent and Z-Rod, and Thistle with their mystical healing properties, combined with objects more familiar to viewers, such as needles, thread, cotton, beds and ping-pong balls, these works form a mysterious world in which the main purpose is the searching of an inner soul.
When discussing this work, Chen explained she used, “the wording of mythical stories; the truisms in mythical stories. We live in a place that seems mythical, far away from the world. The sky is filled with stars and the ground with flowers and thorns. The more you look, the more you think they are multiplying… When you stand still and watch them, they make you close one eye as you futilely speculate their distances.” The fact that this world is much more vast and unrestrained than our material world also grabs the viewer’s attention.
In actuality, Chen has always harbored a strong resistance and suspicion of narrow-minded, blind obedience towards reality. She once stated, “…historical factors, and the surprising extent of our material knowledge and material power, do not constitute our civilization; in fact, they strip us of our balance between the material and the spiritual.” Therefore, “how does one live their daily lives in a wise manner? Experience all there is to experience? Not be influenced by external pressures or captured by reality, and truly intuit everything? This is what I attempt to find out.” As a result, Chen continuously explores the truth beneath the surface of the world through her creations, so that she can understand the powerful conflict between life and art.
So in this place so easily overlooked by most, Chen’s works display a surprising power. Repetitive, complicated physical labor not only transforms the entire presentation and eminent power of the universe into a kind of inherent climbing force, but also gracefully beckons the artist, “Go, move, forge ahead! You must wholly break through to complete this! And in that moment, you will find enlightenment!” |
