Chi-Wen at ART SG 2024

January 19 -21, 2024
Marina Bay Sands Expo and Convention Centre Singapore

FOCUS Sector | FC15 (Digital Spotlight)
Chi-Wen’s presented artists:
Su Hui-Yu (Taiwan) | Tsubasa Kato (Japan) | Tsui Kuang-Yu (Taiwan) | Wang Jun-Jieh (Taiwan) | Yu Cheng-Ta (Taiwan)| 2ENTER (Taiwan)

FILM Sector
Chi-Wen’s presented artists and films:
Future Shock: The End of Eternity (2023) | Su Hui-Yu
Huai Mo Village (2012) | Hsu Chia-Wei
Woodstock 2017 (2017) | Tsubasa Kato
That‧This (2018) | Hu Ching-Chuan

ART SG FILM Sector Gallery Page

ART SG FILM is held at ArtScience Museum – ArtScience Cinema
https://www.artsg.com/film/

For more information about artists and artworks please contact: gallery@chi-wen.com

Chi-Wen Gallery for ART SG 2024 will present a specially curated presentation “The Edge of Island: the Cinematic in Taiwanese Video Art”, showing the works of 6 eminent Taiwanese and Japanese video artists, with works created from the 1980s to the present. Participating artists are Su Hui-Yu, Tsubasa Kato, Tsui Kuang-Yu, Wang Jun-Jieh, Yu Cheng-Ta and 2ENTER.

For the presentation we create a special Cinema Room to screen Chi-Wen’s selection of video/film by Su Hui-Yu, Tsui Kuang-Yu, Tsubasa Kato,Yu Cheng-Ta, while one CRT television will be showing a loop of “FACE/TV” (1989) by Wang Jun-Jieh and one multimedia installation showing a generative art of “DATA-VERSE U #Calendar” by 2ENTER collective.

Opening “The Edge of Island: the Cinematic in Taiwanese Video Art” is “The Walker” from 2017 by Su Hui-Yu, which along with Tsubasa Kato’s “Woodstock 2017”. The most senior of the video artist in this presentation was born in the sixties, at the time of the emergence and early propagation of television in Taiwan. This generation of artists was also the nation’s first to have easy access to cameras, camcorders, editing stations and other tools for creating and manipulating video. The end of martial law in Taiwan in 1987, together with economic growth and the rapid development of electronic devices during these years, influenced the cultural development of Taiwan and consequently the work practices of Taiwanese contemporary artists began to change. Artists felt increasingly comfortable to explore different subject matters without limits and their creative realm was able to expand with the help of new technologies. Moreover, with their specific knowledge of new media obtained in the West, returning students advanced the concept of video art into Taiwan and induced further interest for exploration.

About the Artworks

Su Hui-Yu | The Walker
2017 / Taiwan / 18min / colour / sound / video

Schedule
Venue: Chi-Wen Gallery (ART SG 2024 / FOCUS – FC15)
Time: 2024/1/18 2pm-9pm, 2024/1/19 12-7pm, 2024/1/20 11am-7pm, 2024/1/21 11am-5pm

Synopsis
As one of the active experimental theaters during the 1990s, Taiwan Walker had been engrossing for its vernacular spirit-based theatrical aesthetics since its founding in 1992. Su Hui-Yu had watched their performances on an irregular basis since his college days. The theater’s DIY ethos beyond institutionalization and marketization as well as its ability in interfering in the highbrow art with popular cultures have substantially influenced Su’s artistic practices.

Introduction
In “The Walker”, Su ingeniously deconstructed three of the theater’s plays, namely Mary Scooter (1993), Asshole Man (1996), and Our Top Horny Novels (2000). He extracted the character designs from these plays, emulated the theater’s theatrical method, and asked amateur actors to improvise on site. Based on a multi-character narrative structure, this work re-interprets the velocity, prime-time, rebellion, physical pleasure and ethical minefield referred to in these three plays, recalling the artistic utopia ever pictured by the theatre; to wit, a polysemous, hybridized art world whose components range from the sublime to the ridiculous.

Su-Hui-Yu (b. 1976) currently Lives and works in Taipei, Taiwan.
(also Included in FILM sector)

Su Hui-Yu | L’être et le Néant (1962, Chang Chao-Tang)
2017 / Taiwan / 5min / colour / sound / video

Schedule
Venue: Chi-Wen Gallery (ART SG 2024 / FOCUS – FC15)
Time: 2024/1/18 2pm-9pm, 2024/1/19 12-7pm, 2024/1/20 11am-7pm, 2024/1/21 11am-5pm

Synopsis
Su Huiyu’s “L’être et le Néant (1962, Chang Chao-Tang) ” is an attempt to reassemble (not interpret) Chang Chao-Tang’s famous photo piece Being I (the translation of Chinese title is supposed to be Being and Nothingness).

Introduction
The atmosphere of 1962 was darkened by the shadow of martial law and the White Terror. It was an era when people’s thoughts and the feelings had nowhere to go. This sense of stifling and emptiness happened to resonate a little in tone with existentialism, the prevailing “trend in the world thought” at the time. While this resonance had very little to do with comprehension, and may have even been little more than a similarity in title (Jean-Paul Sartre had published his book Being and Nothingness in 1943), it still precisely captured the zeitgeist – a marginal zone of longing for freedom that was unattainable, longing for truth that lay out of reach. Today when revisit the scene of Chang’s Being I, we can’t help being abruptly shocked. That experience of being suffocated, being incarcerated, that sense of being tightly constrained or even a little terrified seems not so far away.

Su Hui-Yu (b.1976) currently lives and works in Taipei, Taiwan.

Tsubasa Kato | Woodstock 2017
2017 / Japan / 4min 07sec / colour / sound / video

Schedule
Venue: Chi-Wen Gallery (ART SG 2024 / FOCUS – FC15)
Time: 2024/1/18 2pm-9pm, 2024/1/19 12-7pm, 2024/1/20 11am-7pm, 2024/1/21 11am-5pm

Synopsis

The medium for the collective action in this performance is the US national anthem. As Benedict Anderson has made clear, national anthems experientially tie together the nation and its citizens. The national anthem can also satirize an era, depending on the context. Jimi Hendrix’s performance at the Woodstock music festival in 1969, where over 400,000 people gathered, attests to this reality.

Introduction
In this work, four white men perform the anthem while tied together by ropes. This constricted performance turns each performer into an obstacle for the others. In other words, there is an inverse relationship between the degree of ease of carrying out the performance (goal) and the number of performers involved. This performance had these four musicians attempt the anthem inside of this contradiction.

Nowadays, we are always connected to someone via social media, and while being privy to their daily life, we are aware that we our lives are likewise being monitored in return. Although these platforms offer us a way of direct and instantaneous self-expression, they also cause us to increasingly regulate ourselves. This work satirizes this dilemma of connection and restriction, while presenting an image of us resisting in the process.

Tsubasa Kato (b.1984) currently lives and works in Tokyo, Japan.
(also Included in FILM sector)

Yu Cheng-Ta | Ode to the Taipei Biennial
2016 / Taiwan / 8min 06sec / colour / sound / video

Schedule
Venue: Chi-Wen Gallery (ART SG 2024 / FOCUS – FC15)
Time: 2024/1/18 2pm-9pm, 2024/1/19 12-7pm, 2024/1/20 11am-7pm, 2024/1/21 11am-5pm

Synopsis
In Yu Cheng-Ta’s video work, Ode to the Taipei Biennial (2016), one follows the mesmeric chanting of a cappella music, taking an unusual tour around different corners of the interior space in Taipei Fine Arts Museum (TFAM). This work was commissioned by the museum on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the Taipei Biennial.

Introduction
Within any biennial there always exists the dual problems of local voice and international position. It is an indispensable stage for performance, but conversely, it can also be an intractable burden. For 20 years the Taipei Biennial has strived to introduce Taiwanese contemporary art and to forge international connections. Looking back on this history and taking the 1996 Taipei Biennial as a staring point, Yu revises exhibition statements as lyres to be chanted in A cappella. Making reference to the structure of the six male curators of the past, Yu has invited six professional singers to perform in three parts-tenor, baritone and bass-in the Taipei Fine Arts Museum lobby with its rich atmosphere of modernity. A cappella was a common form of church music in the 15th and 16th centuries, and it experienced a renaissance in the 19th century. Comprised exclusively of the human voice and sung in multi-part harmonies, it is a form of music that cleanses the heart. In the video six men blend together many vocalizations and utterances based on the prescribed tempo. As the score constantly advances and the notes interweave, the pleasing harmonies within the high-ceilinged space refract the “identity of Taiwanese art” that the statements describe. As the piece concludes with two notes, what can be seen is a self-fantasy of Taiwan’s political state within the current of international trends.

Yu Cheng-Ta (b.1983) currently lives and works in Taipei, Taiwan.

Tsui Kuang-Yu | The Wind from Taipei
2020 / Taiwan / 7min 25sec / colour / sound / video

Schedule
Venue: Chi-Wen Gallery (ART SG 2024 / FOCUS – FC15)
Time: 2024/1/18 2pm-9pm, 2024/1/19 12-7pm, 2024/1/20 11am-7pm, 2024/1/21 11am-5pm

Synopsis
Every year during the winter season, the piercingly cold northeast monsoon blows across Taiwan, from the northern part of Taiwan, crossing the central mountain range, all the way to Hengchun in the southern part of Taiwan. When the wind swept through Hengchun, it creates the foehn (downslope wind) weather phenomenon unique to Hengchun. In particular, it brings about typhoon-like sand storms in the desert by the sea.

Introduction
This video was shot in a declining fishing village in southern Taiwan close to Hengchun. Just like many towns that await regeneration, there are dilemmas between development and local culture, in this village everyone has a different vision for its future, brimming with contradictions and expectations. The same wind blows, but it creates different humanities and landscapes from the north to south of Taiwan. Although artists from Taipei could understand this conflict, they can only objectively express their observations as “Taipeier” from a detached perspective.

Tsui Kuang-Yu (b.1974) currently lives and works in Tainan, Taiwan.

Wang Jun-Jieh | FACE / TV
1989 / Taiwan / 13min / colour / sound / video

Schedule
Venue: Chi-Wen Gallery (ART SG 2024 / FOCUS – FC15)
Time: 2024/1/18 2pm-9pm, 2024/1/19 12-7pm, 2024/1/20 11am-7pm, 2024/1/21 11am-5pm

Synopsis
After the martial law was lifted in the nascent democratised Taiwan, WANG, without any source of reference, created five video artworks including FACE/TV, addressing criticism against mass media and political hegemony. Using a satirical approach, he questioned if the images we saw on TV are identical to the objects being captured.

Introduction
Jun-Jie Wang’s video artworks created between 1984 and 1999 unquestionably echoed the course of world history in a delicate manner. After the lifting of martial law in the nascent democratized Taiwan, the artist, without any source of reference, created five video artworks addressing a riotous profusion of issues ranging from the satire on sex and social taboos, The Depth of the Epidermis, to the criticism against mass media and political hegemony: Image, Repeat, Image, The TV Channel Broadcasting Porn Everyday, FACE / TV and How Was History Wounded.

Wang Jun-Jieh (b.1963) currently lives and works in Taipei, Taiwan.

2ENTER | DATA-VERSE U # Calendar
2022 / Taiwan / Internet-generated images, acrylic, microcomputer, hardware

Schedule
Venue: Chi-Wen Gallery (ART SG 2024 / FOCUS – FC15)
Time: 2024/1/18 2pm-9pm, 2024/1/19 12-7pm, 2024/1/20 11am-7pm, 2024/1/21 11am-5pm

Synopsis
The focal point of project Data-Verse is the “visualization of real-time internet information”, whereas “U” stands for “You”.

Introduction
The traditional Chinese calendar, used in daily life, compiles the complex information of a whole year into a stack of 365 thick pages, each marking the year, month, day, and season details for each day. Data-Verse digitizes this traditional tear-off calendar, allowing it to exist permanently on the Internet without the need for annual replacements. This digital calendar will be updated daily, and the fruit illustrations on top will change with the seasons.

2ENTER (f. 2021) currently lives and works in Taipei, Taiwan.

About Chi-Wen Gallery

Founded in 2004 by Chi-Wen Huang, Chi-Wen Gallery is one of Taiwan’s leading galleries, showing the best of contemporary Taiwanese art with a focus on video and photography. The gallery is dedicated to supporting emerging artists with curatorial projects that explore the most cutting-edge subjects and has been actively participating in local and international art fairs. As such Chi-Wen Gallery is very much connected with today’s art and represents artists whose work continues to grow in historical importance.

Over the last decade Chi-Wen Gallery has fostered the careers of a diverse group of internationally renowned artists, both emerging and established, whose practices transformed the way art is made and presented in Taiwan today. These artists include Chen Chieh-Jen, Chang Chao-Tang, Chang Li-Ren, Hu Ching-Chuan, Jawshing Arthur Liou, Lin Yu-Sheng, Peng Hung-Chih, Paul Gong, River Lin, Su Hui-Yu, Tusi Kuang-Yu, Su Misu, Sin Wai Kin (fka Victoria Sin), Wang Jun-Jieh, Yao Jui-Chung, Yuan Goang-Ming, Yu Cheng-Ta and among others.

In 2020, Chi-Wen Gallery established Chi-Wen Productions during the global pandemic and released its first title God-Men: Episode I in 2021 in which five artists were appointed as film directors. The recent film production “Sin Wai Kin, A Dream of Wholeness in Parts (2021)” was touring for British Art Show 9 and nominated for Turner Prize 2022.

Chi-Wen Gallery has been an active participant in local and global art fairs and festivals, including Art Basel Hong Kong, Frieze Art Fair and LOOP Barcelona.