To Dress up at Home
Videos by Yuang Goang-Ming, Peng Hung-Chih, Tsui Kuang-Yu
April 23 – May 28, 2016
Chi-Wen Gallery is pleased to present a group exhibition by three Taiwanese video artists Yuan Goang-Ming, Peng Hung-Chih and Tsui Kuang-Yu on view at the gallery from April 23 to May 28 2016. The artists will be present for an opening reception on Saturday, April 23 from 3 to 6 PM.
Yuan Goang-Ming | On the Way Home | Single-channel Video | 13min 30sec | Sound, Color | 1989
Text / Taiwan Today
Yuan got NIA (National Institute of the Arts) professor Su Shou-zheng to play the lead role in On the Way Home, which depicts the daily life of a teacher. It rains continually as the teacher trudges in solitude back to his home, where he opens the door and enters to find the sink in his bathroom overflowing. There is no plot or startling twist in the story line, yet the video is taut with suspense. With this experimental piece, the fresh new face walked off with a Golden Harvest Award in 1990.
Peng Hung-Chih | To Dress at Home -5 | Single-channel Video | 55 sec | Sound, Color | 2001
“To Dress Up at Home” is a series of works including 4 photographs and one video “To Dress up at Home-5”
Two dogs are removed from a pound, only to be returned costumed as “purebreds,” a Collie and a Dalmatian. Their new skins cover their bodies almost entirely, and plastic eyeballs with small holes that enable the dogs to see, make the transformation even more complete. The main interaction of the film is a barking match between a caged dog and the costumed Collie. The camera captures the two as it would any dialogue, their profiles evenly distributed across the frame. One barks, then the other appears to respond. It seems like this call and response could go on forever. The changing intensity and frequency of the barks confuses any attempt to easily distinguish whether the message communicated is benevolent or hostile. As in much of Peng’s work, the viewer is left to project onto rather ambiguous sign systems. Is this canine conversation about jealousy, longing or perhaps just a retelling of what has happened since these two old friends lost touch?
Four photographs further document this interaction. Often featuring many dogs within same shot, the contrast between the pound dogs and those wearing clean costumes is dramatic. In one birds-eye shot, the Collie-convert is being mounted by a scruffy-looking Golden Retriever mix while the rest of the dogs are staring in another direction. In another, the Collie appears to be fighting with another dog. At the other end of the pen, the Dalmatian replica stares blankly into space, while a group of dogs are all engaged in the familiar canine ritual of determining another’s identity; sniffing its behind.
Tusi Kuang-Yu | Invisible City : Amstell 88 III | Action video, Single-channel Video | 1min 46sec | Sound, Color | 2006
This film was a response to my work “Invisible City: Sea-Level Leaker.” I recreated the room in Amsterdam that I had lived in, and imagined that the city had returned to a state flooded by the sea; this was another way of interpreting the real environment of the city.