Softness Remain: Chiu Chen-Hung solo exhibition

Unlike works of disaster literature, such as Haruki Murakami’s After the Quake, which portrays how individuals respond to the indifference of the universe, softness remain turns its focus toward the act of remembering. It situates time within the weight and debris of what remains. Through the language of sculpture, Chiu attempts to recontain moments of disarray and breakage within a new order—one that does not resolve or erase, but gathers what has splintered into a fragile, emergent coherence.

In the evolution of contemporary art forms, sculpture is no longer confined to commemorating religion or heroism. It has come to value the everyday and the ethical dimensions of the present. In his practice, Chiu Chen-Hung deliberately avoids shaping his work around specific events or direct references. He conceives of the sculptural object as a medium that responds to time, space, and the body, opening up a field in which abstract thought may become visible. In doing so, his work extends the function of sculpture beyond what form alone can conventionally bear.

For Chiu, the notion of order—or rather, the configuration of sculptural language—is not aligned with classical ideals of permanence or grandeur. Instead, it is a form of wholeness achieved through repair. Whether through literal mending of cracks and fragments or by allowing rupture itself to acquire aesthetic renewal through artistic form, Chiu redefines completion through imperfection. Attuned to the external life-forms of flora, fauna, and organic matter, along with their flaws and wounds, he treats these irregularities as foundations for a different kind of formal integrity. Like the Japanese craft tradition of kintsugi, where the fissures of a broken vessel are rejoined and made visible as part of its design, Chiu’s sculptural vocabulary is rooted in a sustained care for what is fragmented and missing. This ethic of attentive restoration has remained central to his artistic worldview.

In his work Concrete Zoo, Chiu Chen-Hung reflects, “I see the emergence of these concrete animals as a kind of filler for a particular era. To me, they are like materials, or ready-mades, that lack confidence.” These animal sculptures, produced by anonymous craftsmen, are crude and comically awkward in form. They show none of the proportional precision expected from trained sculptors, nor are they rendered in materials such as marble, bronze, or stainless steel—those traditionally associated with perfection and permanence. And yet, it is precisely these unstable, deteriorating, and flawed sculptures that speak most vividly to the mission of sculpture itself. Nestled within the forested hills of Meilun, their wild vitality offers a poignant counterpoint to classical ideals. They mark the passage of time not through monumental permanence but through weathered fragility, bearing the weight and meaning of time in ways that only such imperfect objects can.

In softness remain, Chiu Chen-Hung works with salvaged materials—steel reinforcement bars, bricks, and concrete recovered from buildings that collapsed during earthquakes. From these fragments, he reconstructs sculptural forms: a spiraling staircase, cabinet structures, slope reinforcements, and biomorphic lighting fixtures. Together, they suggest a heterogeneous yet interdependent order drawn from the wreckage of reality.

In Unbalanced Spiral, the spiral form draws on the Fibonacci sequence and the double helix of DNA, primal geometries that signify the laws of life and self-replication. Yet here, the spiral is no longer stable or perpetually ascending. It veers off-center—ruptured, asymmetrical. Traces of fracture, displacement, and regeneration are inscribed along its path. Each stair tread functions like a mold, embedding fragments from various disaster zones. The terrazzo surfaces preserve sedimented layers of time and erosion, congealing into a spiral that appears structurally coherent yet inherently unbalanced.

In Night and Soul, Chiu transforms twisted rebar and shattered concrete left in the wake of earthquakes into sculptural forms resembling bookshelves and books, constructing a miniature library that holds memory. The soft glow of a work lamp drifts slowly across the metal and debris, bathing the space in a damp, spectral humidity—as though time buried beneath rubble were beginning to seep once again to the surface. Chiu has said that this work weaves together recurring nightmare imagery he experienced under intense psychological pressure with the broken architecture left behind by the 403 Earthquake. In these dreams, he stands alone by the sea at night. From the horizon, the moon distorts into a massive single eye, silently staring back at him. The crashing waves of the dream, full of dread and fragmentation, are transfigured in the artwork into sealed books, inscribed with stories, yet unreadable.

The artist gathers post-earthquake remains from abandoned sites. Twisted rebar becomes the structural spine of the bookshelf, while fractured concrete, shattered and remixed with cement, is recast into the forms of books. In this transformation, trauma, dream, and material are layered into a presence that cannot be fully verbalized—one that continues to gaze, unrelentingly, back at the viewer.

Within this trajectory, it becomes clear why Chiu Chen-Hung is drawn to dialogue with objects of all kinds: mineral remnants, metal tools, work permits, slope stabilization meshes. These fragments of architecture and instruments of labor, rarely seen as part of sculptural discourse, are absorbed into Chiu’s sculptural system. For the artist, these marginal, unassuming materials offer precisely the vocabulary needed to mend the fractures of time. They traverse the boundaries between nature and industry, organic and geometric, absence and wholeness.

Returning to the title softness remain, Chiu’s notion of softness is not merely an expression of human resilience. It speaks to the material’s own capacity to bear witness. It is about sculpture as a contemporary form of recordkeeping—capturing, through its oblique angles and fractured syntax, the tense and interdependent relationship between people, objects, and the natural world in our time.