地點 / Venue: 耘非凡美術館 (台南市東區林森路一段370號)
展覽開幕 / Opening：2020.01.05  10:30

學術座談
2020.01.05  14:00

主持人：廖新田
與談人：蘇茜 SUSIE x 顧振清 x 劉柏村

2020.01.05  15:40

Venue: Mezzo museum 

主持人：廖仁義
與談人：潘襎 x 劉俊蘭 x 李玉玲

學術論壇
2020.03.14  14:00

主持人：陳貺怡
與談人：王品驊 x 簡子傑 x 陳泓易 x 許遠達

新書發表會
2020.03.14  16:00

Steel Romance Solo Exhibition of Po-Chun Liu

The Jin Gang series is the theme of my practice and research for the past ten years, it is also the most significant series of my works executed in metal. The term Jin Gang refers to the Vajra Warriors, the wrathful and muscular guardians of the Buddha. In my work, the Jin Gang figures are basically taken from the iconic image of the bodybuilders, it combines the original concept of “the indestructible body” of the Buddha, the imaginations in mythologies, science fictions, Manga and animations about the body as invincible or as the incarnation of steel, all of which manifests the idea of the “Ideal and Perfect Body” as a reference to and a practice of the industrial civilization.

Through formal considerations such as variation in size, replication and differences, aggregation and separation, and complexity and multiplicity, etc, the image of Jin Gang leads to the formation of a variety of series such as the Linear Jin Gang, the Scrap Iron Jin Gang, Jin Gang the Transformer, Fantasy Jin Gang, Jin Gang Abroad, Jin Gang of the Foreign Territory, Ascending Jin Gang, etc. They each express their own roles and content, and developed the Jin Gang Romance or Steel Romance born from variables in my artistic thinking. These broad and general artistic experiments respond in macro and micro views, to not only industrial development and modern civilization, but also the condition of existence of nature, the universe and human beings. At this point, Jin Gang Romance or Steel Romance takes to a form of “comprehensive performance”, it backtracks as well as expands and extends the content of the exhibition.

Perhaps Jin Gang no longer refers to the untouchable Vajra body in our established perception anymore, but is it not also an individual’s ideal vision for the future development of our industrial and technological civilization? Is it a corporal vessel projected by the god? Or a meaning with an empty representation? Or a present-day parable of an unknown state of the universe?