Romance : Yao Jui-chung`s solo exhibition

DURATION: 2009-12-19 ~ 2010-01-31
OPENING: 2009-12-19 15:00-PM
VENUE: In Art Space

For a long time, artist Yao Jui Chung has critically examined major political and historicevents in his practice. Participating in The 6th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art,he will show an ongoing project Everything Will Fall Into Ruin which considers the idea of an‘aesthetic of ruins’ at the Queensland Art Gallery. The upcoming exhibition at Tainan’s InArtSpace, Yao’s new drawing series Romance is a retrospection of his shifting frame of mind ashe approaches midlife. In this series, Yao inserts contemporaniety into the unyielding form ofancient practices. By appropriating Chinese traditional artworks to narrate his personal lifeand emotional accounts, he transforms literary classics into autobiographical recounts. HowYao will represent his slightly wild days in these works is greatly anticipated.Formally, Yao references Chinese genre painting and JieHua (Chinese architecturepainting) in the two series Romance and Dreamy. He composes his works bypatching low-resolution images taken from the Internet. Yao uses “caterpillar spinssilk thread” – a self-invented drawing technique, covering textured Indian hand-madepaper with pen lines. The main subjects, a horned-devil with its old fling, act out alove story as they roam in the imaginary arcadia.Yao crafts meshed landscapes with hard drawing pen; the countless strokes seem totell a midlife confession, and the scenery is lamenting for the vanishing romance.Overlaying the negative spaces with gold, the lavishing landscape is but Yao’s fleetingdreams from the youth. The laborious process of gilding and drawing is as a soul-conditioning ritual, converging his youthful recklessness into humility. Through the mesmerizing gleam of the images, Yao weaves together historic events and personal fables; though the amorous affair continues in the dream-like world, he can linger no more.