God-Men Screening | 24-7-holics Anonymous Association by Lin Yu-Sheng

Dates | 2 Oct – 23 Oct, 2021
Viewing Hours | Tue – Sat 16:00-18:00 (By appointment only)
Venue | Chi-Wen Gallery (No.32 Ln. 2, Sec. 6, Zhongshan N. Rd., Taipei)
Opening | 2 Oct, 2021 Sat 16:00-18:00
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Due to the recent outbreak of COVID-19, all participants must take necessary sanitary precautions. Please wear masks, use alcohol-based hand sanitizers and have your body temperature taken at the entrance. We reserve the right to refuse those who have a body temperature over 37.5℃. Your kind cooperation will be highly appreciated. 

Please make an appointment online before your visiting
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Artist’s statement 

”People can live without government service for a day, but not a convenience store.“

Convenience stores are almost Invincible in Taiwan, 28% of Taiwanese go shopping in convenience stores every day. It seems that people are ’’addicted to it’.At the end of 2018, I started a project of ‘’Overcoming convenience store addiction’’. As I have decided to follow through, I have not visited any of the convenience stores for one year and nine months so far. Let’s reflect on the issue of ‘’Convenience or Crisis?‘‘. Accordingly, I’ve established an institution called 24/7 AA (24/7 Anonymous Association), this association is trying to raising public awareness of relying too heavily on convenience stores.

In fact, there are 11,717 convenience stores in Taiwan, the volume of 3,316 billion business in 2019. The number of total visitors has reached 30.84 billion per year. According to the statistics, Taiwanese visit the convenience store every three days. The convenience stores also provide over 3,906 services besides selling products.

The development and strategy formulation of the convenience store enterprise comes from the needs of consumers. They are experts and observe our daily lives. The key is in our hands, we need to think twice before acting.

During a short period of time, a number of car accidents happened almost simultaneously at certain convenience stores, such as a drunk driver crashing into a store until his car came to a stop on top of the counter; or a motorcycle rider smashing into the store’s goods shelf.

Suspected causes the police was investigating ranged from “coincidence” to “insurance fraud”, until an officer found a piece of key evidence – a “24-7-holics Anonymous Guide”.

“At the end of the 20th century, she will once again confuse people with “chronic poison”, and regain control of human society with a “powerful magic” that seems to be freedom and wealth, but that in fact is greed and corruption.”

The association’s members believed in this prophecy without a doubt and to proof it they launched 12 terrorist attacks on convenience stores……

24/7 AA  trying to help public awareness of relying too heavily on convenience stores and redefine what is “Convenience store”.
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Exhibition intro

Chi-Wen Productions, a new and ambitious platform initiated by Chi-Wen Gallery, is a production company that aims to gather visual artists and film makers to facilitate long-term collaborative projects, aimed particularly at giving artists the ability to create high quality work like their fellow videographers.

In 2020, Chi-Wen Productions produced a series of short films collectively named “God-Men Episode I”, for which five artists participated, including Jawshing Arthur Liou, Yu-Sheng Lin, Paul Gong, Li-Ren Chang and Su Misu. The “God-Men Episode I” series was first made available online via Vimeo-on-Demand, and will soon be shown in physical exhibitions at Chi-Wen Gallery.

Yu-Sheng Lin’s contribution to the series, “24-7-holics Anonymous Association,” is up first and will be shown from October 2 to October 23, 2021. The piece is a detective film that reflects on the impact of consumer life by examining the omnipresence of the convenience store as contemporary witchcraft.

In addition to the film screenings, the exhibition will also display installations that present the filmmaking and production processes, giving the viewer a peek behind the scenes and into the artist’s thought process, including a physical representation of a ‘24-7-holics Anonymous’ meeting.
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About the artist

Lin Yu-Sheng (b.1981) currently lives and works in Taipei, Taiwan. Lin established art group “2days Studio” in 2010, their works sit between fiction and reality of the daily life and intend to reassemble art through actions, design, networking, photography, mass media and other multi-media. 2days Studio attempts to combine the conceptual and the practical aspects of art to foster the contact between people, discussion, and reflection upon “art event” and to facilitate the intervening of “art event.”
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This exhibition is supported by Taipei Department of Cultural Affairs.