Based on solid photography research, the exhibition foregrounds a deep context stemming from the surface of photographic images by HUNG Cheng-jen. At the exhibition site and standing in front of the works, what the audience perceive is an expansive landscape filled with sharp briary spikes. Sometimes, images cut into thin strips resonate with rods of steel, and sometimes, heads that are cut off and pasted back again seem to express certain chaos of a site. At times, the human figures in the midst of dilapidated walls and twisted steel rods resemble ghosts from the underworld, and at other times, one cannot help but feeling that the figures in these images embody the collapsed state of the site. The barbed consciousness highlighted in Hung’s work repeatedly pokes and jabs the contemporary land and the audience’s existence in reality, pointing both to the symptomatic pains of “tē-hng” (place) and the shrill cries of “tiûnn-sóo” (site).
(Commentator/GONG Jow-Jiun)

THÓO-PŌO TÓO-GÍ Hung Cheng-Jen: A Survey looks at Kaohsiung-based artist HUNG Cheng-jen’s creative trajectory of nearly four decades, as well as his unique journey of art informed by innumerous twists and changes. The exhibition surveys the formation of Hung’s creative method and artistic style, and depicts the “wild” nature of his artistic journey informed by various qualities, such as “non-academic,” “laborer,” and “Kaohsiung,” which beckon at the environment and conditions formed outside the orthodox and mainstream structure of art. Moreover, the exhibition traces how the artist has used his works as responses to the social changes in Taiwan from the 1980s until today, along with the developments of local photography and the art environment.

HUNG Cheng-jen (b. 1960) was born in Kaohsiung. He currently works as a technician at the CPC Corporation. Known as a blue-collar artist, Hung has had a creative career in photography spanning nearly forty years. His work expresses deep concern over environment and land, with an emphasis on impacts and contradictions caused by natural catastrophes, man-made disasters, as well as socio-political changes. While combining characteristics of two-dimensional photography and three-dimensional materials, he adds his own images as the protagonist into his work, and transforms both real and imaginary worlds into cautionary, frightful images.

YANG Shun-Fa was born in Shanhua, Tainan, and now lives in Kaohsiung. A blue-collar worker at China Steel Corporation, YANG has practiced photography for more than thirty years. In recent years, he has conducted an extensive field survey of Taiwan’s coastal lines, and developed “The Island Project,” in which the series titled The Submerged Beauty of Formosa was awarded the Kaohsiung Award in 2018. His works have been featured in various exhibitions in France, Hong Kong, Kosovo, and North Ireland. Yang’s other art series include Taiwan To Go and Ocean Theater.

WU Mong-jane is an artist and educator of photography. She graduated from the Department of Sociology, National Taiwan University in 2000. She also holds an MA in Architecture from the University of London, and an MFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts (SMFA), Boston. She was a lecturer at SMFA’s Department of Photography, a photographer at Lifetouch (USA), and a lecturer in the Young Voice Award presented by Fubon Cultural and Educational Foundation. Wu used to work at the National Center of Photography and Images, and is now an adjunct lecturer at the Department of Graphic Communications and Digital Publishing, Shih Hsin University.

LIN Xiao-Xi is a curator at Mezzo Art, Tainan. She graduated from the Department of Theatrical Design and Technology, Taipei National University of the Arts in 2012, and has worked in educational outreach programs at several private art museums and art institutions. She has been a graduate student at the TNUA’s Graduate Institute of Museum Studies since 2017. Lin enjoyed exploring the relationship between humanity and creativity through literature and screenplays. Now, her goal is to convey stories behind artworks to the public through writing in an approachable language.