Chi-Wen Gallery at LOOP Fair Barcelona 2023

LOOP FAIR 2023
November  21 – 23, 2023

Tuesday, 21 Nov
Noon – 7pm | Preview (by accreditation only)
7pm – 8:30pm | Opening

Wednesday, 22 Nov & Thursday, 23 Nov
4pm – 8:30pm | Fair opening hours

LOOP Barcelona ｜http://loop-barcelona.com

LOOP VIRTUAL 2023
LOOP Fair Online

6 – 20 Nov | Preview
21 – 30 Nov  | Public access

LOOP VIRTUAL｜https://virtual.loop-barcelona.com

With the support of the Ministry of Culture of Taiwan.

For LOOP Fair Barcelona 2023, Chi-Wen Gallery will present “How Was History Wounded?”(1989) by Taiwanese artists Wang Jun-Jieh & Cheang Shu-Lea.

Wang Jun-Jieh & Cheang Shu-Lea | How Was History Wounded? 
Single-channel Video | Colour | Sound | 28’20” | 1989

The authority of mainstream culture is founded upon the trust of the public. And the legitimacy of this authority is in fact a paper tiger. It’s necessary to investigate the structure of the media industry thoroughly, and analyse its contents critically in order to regulate the current system of information and to move towards democracy.

In this film we see three commentators sitting in front of a TV in a news studio discussing the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989 as reported by local and foreign media. Not only did the waves of student protests in Tiananmen Square command media attention around the world, it also attracted the governing authority of Taiwan to cover the issue to its own benefit. With help of the Taiwanese news media, the government manipulated the event in a dramatic manner, as to consolidate the governing power and strengthen people’s anti-communist sentiments. This film aims to examine the politics of image and the image of politics through commenting on the topics of democracy, media control, consumption and commercialism.

About the Artists

Wang Jun-Jieh
Wang Jun-Jieh was born in Taipei, Taiwan, graduated from the HdK Art Academy in Berlin. He received the Hsiung-Shih New Artists Award in 1984, the Berlin Television Tower Award in 1996 and Taishin Arts Award in 2009. Wang is currently professor at the Department of New Media Art at Taipei National University of the Arts.

Wang has participated in many important exhibitions and biennials, including: “Awakenings: Art in Society in Asia 1960s-1990s”, National Gallery Singapore (SG, 2019), National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Gwacheon (KR, 2019) and The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo (JP, 2018) ; “Transmediale: Schizophrenia Taiwan 2.0”, Transmediale, Berlin (DE, 2014); “Monadism”, Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris (FR, 2011); “Contemporary Taiwanese Art in the Era of Contention”, Johnson Museum of Art, Ithaca (US, 2004); The 3rd Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, Queensland Art Gallery (AU,1999) and Taipei Biennial, Taipei Fine Arts Museum (TW 2000/1998).

Cheang Shu-Lea
Born in Taiwan in 1954, Cheang Shu Lea has lived and worked in the United States as well as Japan, Holland, the United Kingdom, and France. Her practice combines artistic concerns with hot-button social issues, defined by her peripatetic and information-era existence. She has been a member of the alternative media collective Paper Tiger Television since 1982 and produced public-access programs for the group addressing racism in the media. In 2001 she cofounded Kingdom of Piracy, an online work space that promotes the free sharing of digital content and ideas as an art form; this project and others are borne of her political and community-driven goals. As an artist, she has worked in a variety of mediums—film, video, installation, web spaces—her output as varied as cyberspace itself.

As a net art pioneer, her BRANDON (1998-1999) was the first web art commissioned and collected by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. Cheang has represented Taiwan at the 58th Venice Biennale in 2019.

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 Misu, Tusi Kuang-Yu, 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)” is touring for British Art Show 9 and nominated for Turner Prize 2022