Yao Jui-chung UK Solo Exhibition

DURATION: 2010-06-15 ~ 2010-07-16
VENUE: Goedhuis Contemporary Gallery
ADDRESS: Carlton Hobbs, 16 Bloomfield Terrace, London SW1W 8PG, U.K.

Yao Jui-chung has been at the cutting edge of Taiwan`s contemporary art scene for nearly two decades. At mid-career, his creative output and provocative undertakings match those of an artist twice his age. Artist, curator, critic, author – Yao challenges expectations and cultural norms in diverse ways. Equally comfortable with photography, sculpture, performance and installation art, theater and film, Yao`s facility with new forms and media allows him to convey the many worlds of the artist in contemporary Taiwan. Like others of his generation, much of Yao Jui-chung`s work has been rooted in issues surrounding Taiwan`s national and cultural identity. Yao`s generation experienced an ideological shift that marked the beginning of a new era in Taiwan. Martial law was lifted in 1987, after nearly four decades during which hopes of reuniting with the mainland lived on long past any reasonable expectation of doing so. For artists and intellectuals, this moment coincided with a period of creative introspection and exploration. Yao Jui-chung`s rejection of previous generations` obsession with the past is at the center of a number of his works. Everything Will Fall Into Ruin (1990-2009) and Recover Mainland China (1997), two photographic series, dealt with history, memory, place, and impermanence in Taiwan and China. In this charged atmosphere of exploration, Yao began to mine the deep vein of inspiration to be found in forms he had previously rejected. Taipei is Yao Jui-chung`s base. Born there in 1969, Yao graduated from the National Institute of Art in 1994. His world, however, stretches far beyond Taiwan. Recognition of his work extends to Europe, North America, and throughout Asia, where he has participated in solo and group exhibitions. In 1997, Yao represented Taiwan at the Venice Biennale with Territory Takeover, an irreverent photographic series on Taiwan`s post-colonial identity. An artistic residency in western Scotland in 2007 marked a change in Yao`s works, and in his attitude toward landscape – especially traditional Chinese landscape painting. Removed from his intensely urban life in Taipei, and surrounded by the moors and craggy peaks of Scotland, Yao found inspiration in landscape. What resulted were works that celebrated both the natural world around him, and the distinctively distorted one favored by his artistic predecessors of the Ming dynasty (1368-1644). Wonderful (2007) and Dust in the Wind (2008-09) are no mere imitations or sentimental interpretations of the past. Instead, these series of landscapes are every bit as idiosyncratic and charged as Yao`s earlier works. Brush and ink give way here to drafting pen and gold leaf, in blatant disregard of the traditional artist`s obsession with brush effects like ink wash and texture strokes. Traditional Chinese erotica proved an equally rich source of inspiration to Yao Jui-chung. Two series indebted to intimate scenes of sensual pleasures are Dreamy (2008-09) and Romance (2009). In them, Yao appropriates themes and elements from Chinese erotica, but rendered decidedly contemporary through special effects of color, pattern, and gold leaf. The inclusion of accoutrements from Yao`s life personalizes them further. Yao`s alter ego in Yao and Maggie on YouTube (2008) holds a laptop, and in Little Cute Plays the Dulcimer (2009) a red moped shares foreground space with a fantastic garden rock. In his works, Yao Jui-chung faces the challenge of traditional Chinese art with the same irreverence he brought to his earlier work. Submitting Chinese painting`s traditions and iconic styles to his characteristic scrutiny and sardonic wit, he has created work that is new, provocative, his own.