When we talk about art, we tend to focus on social or political reflection behind a work of art — with too much emotion and ideal attached. Art becomes a vehicle through which artists voice their thoughts. In a highly globalized and homogenized world, besides leveraging a localized artistic vocabulary in their practice, what else should artists be concerned with?
For this year’s Art Basel Hong Kong, TKG+ is pleased to present Chia-En Jao, Chou Yu-Cheng, Joyce Ho, Chen Ching-Yuan, Mit Jai Inn, and Sawangwongse Yawnghwe. With their knowledge in art history and pursuit of aesthetics, these six artists examine the idea of creation in their respective practices of art making.
Born in 1976 in Taichung, Taiwan, Chia-En Jao works across such mediums as drawing, performance, site-specific installation, and video. Debuting at this year’s Art Basel Hong Kong is Jao’s latest series, where he investigates the relationship between neo-imperialism and the colony by highlighting Japanese anthropologists Ryuzo Torii (1870-1953) and Mori Ushinosuke (1877-1926), known for their pioneering anthropological research in Taiwan. Appropriating the silver helmet worn by the Taiwanese indigenous Tao people during their ceremonial rituals, the artist embedded stained glass in the helmet, hinting at the inevitable collision between local religion, aesthetics, and culture as tectonic shifts occur in economy, faith, and politics. Deliberately designed as a shipping crate for export, the pedestal for the helmet echoes Duchamp’s La Boîte-en-Valise or box in a suitcase. On view at an international art fair, the work mirrors a peculiar image of neoliberalism entwined with the idea of fetish and art collection, along with its past doppelgänger — the world expositions in the age of neo-imperialism.
Born in 1976 in Taipei, Taiwan, Chou Yu-Cheng graduated from the l’Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-arts de Paris, and the research program - La Seine. He specializes in the interplay between aesthetics and society. His works emphasize the working process behind visual aesthetics with a focus on producing alternative modes of operation and cogitation within established mechanisms. Referencing hashtags on social media, the artist juxtaposes words to form the title of his series, “Refresh, Sacrifice, New Hygiene.” He carefully maneuvers a connection with the viewer’s everyday experience through specific words, expanding the meaning of “hygiene” into a criterion for modernization, simultaneously embodying the minute shifts in contemporary perceptions and values.
Born in 1983 in Taipei, Taiwan, Joyce Ho received her M.A. in studio arts from the University of Iowa. She is an interdisciplinary artist with an emphasis in painting, sculpture, and theater. Integrating details of deconstructed movements, epitomes of everyday habits, and rich and illusory light and shadow, Ho's painting, installation, and video works delineate the intimate yet distant relationship and tension between people and reality. Her unique and powerful work envelops and confronts her audience at the same time, rendering the quotidian moment depicted in her work an immediate landscape or ritual. On view at TKG+ in Taipei, Ho’s solo exhibition NO ON is a witty wordplay that invites interpretations. In the forming of the word and its nuance in its kerning and syllable, the title of the exhibition lingers in the distance created by a spacebar and therefore creating the scope of a discrepancy. This way of manipulating the multiple meanings of symbols draws viewers into perceiving their most intimate everyday stories.
Born in 1984 in Tainan, Taiwan, Chen Ching-Yuan built his early practice around politics. Recent years have seen a shift in his artistic pursuit toward the essence of painting. Cocooned in a romanticist ambience, his work is rooted in a sense of déjà vu that enshrouds mystifyingly surrealist narratives that appear at first glance pregnant with fixed and careful connotations. An overflow of subtle and fragmented symbols pervades his painting, where sensory experiences are reconstructed with plausible, fleeting narrative clues. His intricate palette and loose compositions collapse connections between each work, turning every piece into a fable tinged with the artist’s profound consciousness.
Born in 1960 in Chiang Mai, Thailand, Mit Jai Inn is an active artist in Southeast Asia and Europe who garnered international attention at the 2018 Biennale of Sydney. His renowned abstract painting installations come in rough and organic oil pigment clumps condensed upon the huge untrimmed linen canvas, giving off a sense of wildness and freshness, as well as vibrant and saturated shades characteristic of tropical rainforests. Also on view at the Encounters sector (EN10) as a special invitation by the fair committee, Mit’s large-scale installation in a sculpturesque sense of form enfolds viewers, conjuring an immersive experience comprising light, color, and space.
Sawangwongse Yawnghwe was born in 1971 in Shan State, Burma. His grandfather, Sao Shwe Thaik, was Burma’s first president after the country gained independence from Britain in 1948. Shwe Thaik died in prison following the 1962 military coup, and his family was driven into exile. The artist’s painting and installation practice engages in politics with reference to his family history, as well as current and historical events in his country. Family photographs also provide the basis for a pictorial language through which he explores events in the country, suggesting that existing and available archives cannot reveal a nation’s entire truth. His work is collected by MAIIAM Contemporary Art Museum in Thailand.
Founded in Taipei in 2009, TKG+ is committed to supporting experimental, innovative, and critical Taiwanese contemporary art, while privileging artistic forms in diverse mediums, as well as open dialogue between different cultural groups. In their unrelenting pursuit of aesthetics, form, and sensory experience, the above-mentioned artists navigate the contemporary art world through their singular lens. TKG+ hopes to add an eclectic mix to Art Basel Hong Kong through their versatile and ever-evolving practices.