Press release
Chen Ting-Chang, Winner of the Arte Laguna Special Youth Prize at the Occasion of the OPEN 17. International Exhibition of Sculptures and Installations, 2014
CHEN Ting-Chang (1990 - ) is one of the most talented young artists of his generation in contemporary Taiwanese visual art. Currently a post-graduate in the Department of Chinese Ink Painting and Calligraphy, National Taiwan University of Arts, Chen has won prizes at numerous competitions in the past few years. Recently, he has further experimented with various media such as light and sound installation, interactive work, sculpture, and performances. Not being-in-the–world, but rather the sheer mysterious existence of human life has become a central theme to his artistic creation and also the main focus of his poetry. One of his favorite works of Western art is Piet Mondrian’s Tableau 2 (1922) at the Guggenheim Museum, Venice, not least because the interplay of black and white conveys a constant flux that reminds him of the black-and-white dynamics of Chinese ink painting.
In The imitation of the Grand Silence, the work that won him the Arte Laguna Special Youth Prize on the occasion of the OPEN 17. International Exhibition of Sculptures and Installations, 2014, Chen Ting-Chang has succeeded in dealing with the existential and physical presence of human beings whose gaze is not determined by desire but first and foremost by light – by a specific light in a given time and space. By piling up small grids or compartments of transparent acrylic filled with a likewise transparent wax-like fluid, positioning them on top of a naturally-colored inverted mountain, and lastly enclosing them in a grand geometric acrylic box, transparent as well, Chen delineates a world of ‘living’ grids/spaces/times that all look different depending on the actual angle of light incidence and reflection as well as the viewer’s own angle of vision.
Chen has described the possibilities of perceiving the many divers nuances of light parallel to our human gaze, nuances that accompany our life from beginning to end, as follows:
Born in the gaze
The grand silence
Seeing interpretation as real
Space compares with time
This is the arch-form of contradiction
He is born
Imitating time in eternity
As the recipient of the Arte Laguna Special Youth Prize, Chen Ting-Chang will be invited to participate in the upcoming Arte Laguna Finalists Exhibition at the Arsenale, Venice, in March, 2015.
CHEN Ting-Chang
Artist’s statement
I consider artistic creation an opportunity.
It is not about producing something that expresses what I think here and now,
but rather it is like looking into what I have thought before.
While looking in this way, I experience anew, if from a distance, an interpretation of what were my former attitudes toward things and human beings.
For me, artistic creation is not limited to expression and production.
Rather, it means to be the recipient of a powerful message.
This message tells me that ultimately I can see only by myself and that what
I see is just one specific angle of interpretation.
CHEN Ting-Chang
Born 1990, in Taoyuan, Taiwan. Lives and works in Taipei, Taiwan.
Currently graduate studies at the National Taiwan University of Arts (Painting and Calligraphy Dept.)
Exhibitions
2014 The Grand Art Exhibition of New Taipei City, New Taipei City Art
Center, Taipei, Taiwan
2014 Human- Beings are Not Human- Beings, A Joint Exhibition of Nine
Artists, Xinzhuang Art Center, Taipei, Taiwan
2013 Existence of Upside Down Upside Down, National Taiwan University of
Arts, Taipei, Taiwan
2013 The Art Exhibition of New Taipei City, New Taipei City Art Center,
Taipei, Taiwan
2012 That Year, A Joint Exhibition of Chen Ting-Chang and Shen Xiao-wen,
Yilan County Arts Center, Yilan, Taiwan
Awards
2014 Arte Laguna Special Youth Prize, Venice, Italy
2013 First Prize, New Taipei City Art Exhibition - Ink Painting, Taipei, Taiwan
2013 First Prize, Department exhibition, National Taiwan University of Art, Taiwan
2012 First Prize, Department exhibition, National Taiwan University of Art, Taiwan
2011 First Prize, Department exhibition, National Taiwan University of Art, Taiwan
Collection
2014 The Imitation of the Grand Silence, International University Venice, Italy
2013 Dust Action, National Taiwan University of Arts, Taipei, Taiwan
The Imitation of the Grand Silence, 2014, acrylic, ink, wax & clay, 28 x 10 x 120 cm