In the 2024 edition of Art Basel Hong Kong (Booth 3D22), YIRI ARTS presents a solo exhibition featuring three distinct series of representative works- 'Inverted Syntax,' 'Delicate Sensibilities,' and ‘Another Place Series.’ – by Taiwanese artist Chen Sung-Chih. This presentation explores the artist's distinctive and literary approach to art, unveiling the hidden yet intimate relationships that reside within everyday experiences and the subtle way in which they dominate people's consciousness and perception.
Chen Sung-Chih (born 1978 in Nantou, Taiwan) holds a seminal position in the realm of large-scale installation art in Taiwan. He meticulously manipulates found objects that carry collective memories, employing techniques such as destruction, unveiling, and inversion to dissociate these objects from their mundane contexts and reveal their inherent materiality within the given space. Through deliberate arrangement and composition, the spatial installations presented to the audience are transformed into extraordinary and indefinable realms. This immersive experience calls for interpretation that relies solely on unfiltered sensory perception.
In his series of works titled ‘Inverted Syntax,’ Chen Sung-Chih employs ready-made materials as the vocabulary of his creative language. Applying the rhetorical device of inverted syntax from literature to spatial contemplation, he overturns common objects such as wooden boards, curtain fabrics, and decorative hooks, reweaving the concepts of time and space. The fabric, in addition to its inherent elegance and charm, can be seen as a net, a trap that captures living beings, a space of cruel hunting. Through the technique of weaving, he constructs spaces and guides the viewers' imaginative paths through subtle clues embedded within the spatial arrangement.
Chen Sung-Chih subverts the symbolic meaning of "fabric" in daily life, transforming a dining table into a canvas and suspending it in reverse, offering a completely new viewing experience. The vintage hooks he collects, which possess a sense of nostalgic beauty, symbolise a state of suspension, where distant history distorts time and space, prompting reflections on reversed living and evoking associations. From different perspectives, he reinterprets found objects, creating a poetic and playful exploration of time.
In his exhibited series titled ‘Delicate Sensibilities,’ Chen Sung-Chih utilizes reclaimed wooden materials from demolished buildings. By peeling away the surface of the wood, piece by piece, he reveals the texture reminiscent of tree bark. The presentation, seemingly abstract, simultaneously unveils the essence of reality, showcasing the fleeting "delicate sensibilities" experienced in everyday life. We reside in environments and events characterised by constant change and construction, bearing witness to the destructive impact of modern life on materiality. Chen Sung-Chih infuses warmth and poetic qualities into these originally rough and indifferent materials, inviting viewers to reexamine their curiosity for these subtle elements. The audience is compelled to carefully scrutinise the material characteristics presented through a process of "subtraction," prompting reflections on the transformations and meanings within the real world.
'Choosing these large quantities of inexpensive daily necessities is actually primarily in response to the everyday aspects of life that everyone has. I don't actually criticize consumerism because consumption itself is a part of daily life. What concerns me more is the different events that arise when similar objects are used by different people. This is what we call "human touch." The traces created or preserved are also the differences between people in our lives, and they are actually the most precious part.
"Delicate Sensibilities," starts with a material destroyed by reality, but through the intervention of the creator, it completes a wall of time where construction and destruction coexist. It's like a beautiful abstract image, but at the same time, it's a continuously changing manifestation. This work actually reflects the contradictions we face between nature and human intervention. Completeness is important, but we cannot ignore the gaps between material and life.'
— Chen Sung-Chih
Similar abstract techniques are also employed in the artwork ‘Another Place Series - borderline.’ Chen Sung-Chih tears up advertising pamphlets and incorporates the torn edges into the artwork, assuming a perspective that challenges the conventional visual centre of painting. Simultaneously, the cacophonous textual content of the advertisements remains silent. Through the conflicting yet cooperative monologue of materials, he seeks to uncover unseen boundaries within visible delineations, akin to the portrayal of a sublime landscape representing the ultimate pure land.
Chen Sung-Chih transports lived experiences and perception through found objects into exhibition space, revealing the artist's obsession with traces and material states, as well as a keen sensitivity to spatial boundaries. Similar to the emphasis on multilayered interpretations in rhetoric, he consistently dissects elements from objects, combining and repositioning them, thus upending the rigid meanings of the contextual reality. Through this magnification of subtle beauty within fragments, elements of objects, memories, and perceptions intertwine, converging into a poetic-like state that evokes multiple sensations in viewers. Simultaneously, by exploiting viewer imprecision and misinterpretation, an overlap emerges between artist's narrative and viewer's history, reshaping reality and forging new memory fragments. In this moment, artist and viewer harmoniously converge across diverse timeframes, as delicate emotions and contemplation softly reverberate within the exhibition space.