YIRI ARTS is delighted to participate in Art Basel Hong Kong 2023 [Booth 1B26, Level 1] with a solo presentation of new works by Taiwanese artist Shih Yung-Chun.
In the 1990s, the first contemporary art museum was established, commonly heralded as the starting point of contemporary art in Taiwan. Additionally, the vocational school was restructured into an art university, fostering a group of returnees and local artists that emerged throughout the subsequent decades. Shih Yung-Jun was born in 1978 to a father who was an army officer from China. Under his father’s influence, he spent his youth in a military dependents’ village. Through his art, viewers are invited to see the trajectory of time, the cultural fusion, and reorganization of regional alienation that was present during this point in his life.
Shih approached his works of art through the dual identity of recorder and producer. He underwent the process of collecting vintage pieces, combining them into an installation, staging the scenes, and documenting them with photography and paintings. From four-dimensional (time), three-dimensional (space) work to two-dimensional (plane) all-media creation, he combines the conflicting ideas of scarce resources and consumerism, innocence and reality, and beauty and sorrow into the work, bring tension and depth to his pieces.
For his series ’Toy Packaging,’ Shih excerpted articles and photos from magazines that featured social issues in the 1980s. He then recreated the dolls and set up scenes to resurrect the static historical photos into a dynamic but fictional world. Oil paintings were created just as the propaganda posters, and the sculptures were packaged into a commercialized installation. Through the display and media methods that Shih choose for several pieces of works, he does not intend to show the viewer a clear narrative line. Instead, he purposefully disassembles the viewer's perception into different vessels, which invites the viewer to participate in the interpretation and rumination of the theme.
