



Artists: CHANG Chia-Ying、 Joyce HO、 CHANG Wen-Hsuan
Curator: JIAN Tzu-Chieh
Opening :2018.09.12 15:00
In The Flesh: The Multiple Narratives of Chang Chia-Ying, Joyce Ho, and Chang Wen-Hsuan
Curator/Jian Tzu-Chieh
In the novel Life is Sweet recently published by Lee Wei-Jing, there is a chapter titled In the Flesh. In the Flesh, this strange book from The Classic of Mountains and Seas, on the one hand has a powerful therapeutic effect but can also make people who eat it crazy. In this novel, set in the contemporary art circle, In the Flesh becomes the symbol of the self-contradictory lives of the artists—on the one hand, captivated by things disdained by others , also precisely describing the creative state of artists, making the invisible visible, like giving form to flesh. On the other hands it also portrays the exchange relationship between artists and the system. In the Flesh can always be slaughered and consumed by people but is always regenerating, his body constantly connected to the system.
Of course, this exhibition featuring Chang Chia-Ying Joyce Ho and Chang Wen-Hsuan has not been named “In the Flesh” because Lee Wei-Jing‘s novels can be used to interpret the curation of this exhibition- it was more because of “novels” and the specific way of novels link scenes. A certain kind of narrative and leisurely scene exists in the work of these three artists– the bodies entwined from the head down, piled up and shot through with viewing holes in Chang Chia-Ying’s paintings, was once described as “mise-enabime” by Huang Jian-Hong, but also a Joyce Ho’s recording and spatial installations, those plots which seem to have broken out abruptly from part of a narrative, the attraction they exert backward or forward toward the viewer, which Gong Jow-Jiun saw as a “quotbe gesture”. The preface Chang Wen-Hsuan wrote for the Collected Stories of Nanshizhuang, which mixed the legends of Nanshizhuang and the War of Resistance against Japan, ingeniously explained this novel and its author’s identity, but was nevertheless an “index” between certain other people and stories.
Unlike those narratives in contemporary art which attempt to allow the voiceless to be heard, these three artists do not attempt to present outlines of political issues, their narratives bring emotion yet do not indicate social targets, but because they also touch on re-emergent structures they seem to be connected to everything. In another area, the scenes they construct are again different from those which attempt to direct the viewer toward another predominant scenes from which there is no return, but rather tend to be closely linked to certain things and certain times. As far as they are concerned all space is like metonymy, switching between many identities to create a continuous scene with those adjacent, making space extend a similar model whose function is not, however, limited to interpreting perspective; this is another state of “in the flesh”.
When “In the Flesh” means a certain kind of creative model for shaping flesh, Joyce Ho’s recordings and spatial installations do not avoid sensory effects, not only does this produce desire no longer relying the single gesture of shaping the flesh, in her new work “2.58 am” the sensory organs have formed a kind of unexpected puncture, it is the tool’s loss of functionalization and also the puncturing of the corporal body, as if she had developed the installation with no restrictions. It embraces the audience yet also excludes them.
If ‘In the Flesh’ can be seen as a kind of internal production model, it has the contradictory nature of healing and causing madness, but the work in “In the Flesh”, although it cannot be called a treatment for madness, views this contradiction as a kind of concealment – Chang Chia-Ying’s new works “Singles Party in the Gingerbread House” and “Witches’ Girls’ Generation” contain hidden connections to other works in the exhibit. The ever-changing arrangement’s happy, carefree style also hides a peculiar order.
If we view “In the Flesh” as a certain kind of theme form which is always linked with institutions, in the plays Chang Wen-Hsuan’s creates, often with only her own two hands and a camera with which she photographs everyday elements. Yet “The Position of the Mouse and the Position of the Little Bird” not only added stories or roles to narratives, but also brought in a strange framework which makes high and low payment placement content through a dialogue between script and subtitles, the screen and the screen- whose story is this? Who is telling the story? Where exactly is the institutional boundary between artist and viewer?