One-man Mission:

Solo Exhibition by CHANG Teng-Yuan

Artist｜CHANG Teng-Yuan

Opening｜2018/03/09(Fri.) 6:00pm

Exhibition Date｜2018/03/09(Fri.)- 2018/04/06 (Fri.)

Galerie Grand Siècle is going to grandly present One-man Mission, a ten-year retrospective of CHANG Teng-Yuan’s work, on view from March 9th to April 6th. Opening reception is held at 6 p.m., on the first day of the exhibition. Scheduled to be the milestone of CHANG Teng-Yuan’s ten-year devotion to a full-time artist, One-man mission traces back to CHANG’s path of creation and the art vocabulary, while recollecting slight evidences within it. To CHANG Teng-Yuan, creation is like an endless, boundless one-man mission as one “sometimes explores in the night with shimmering light, and sometimes getting lost in a ravine,” where unavoidable loneliness and uncertainties often invades like dense fogs. Nonetheless, though being attacked by the sense of unsureness, artist still needs to repress his instinct of resistance, eyeing on the silver lining through the mist, wondering all sorts of possibility to aspire himself to continue the path of mission.

 “Switch of perspectives brings forth different situation.” Understanding the interlinking relationships between visual experience and the sensual world, CHANG Teng-Yuan has committed to showcase visual exploration of different species since his first solo exhibition in 2008 which has always been the most attained subject under CHANG’s paintbrush. From his portrayal of a Japanese comical girl’s visual experience in the early stage, to the compound eye of insects, CHANG’s experiments on the subject had trespassed the bounds of roles and species, in the latter stage adding up to the fourth dimension―time. The role he created changed from existing species to future creatures, bringing upon the known series, Parrot Man, in 2012.

In the Parrot Man series, thousands years after the doomsday, Parrot Man, a biologist living originally in a remote galaxies, lands on the earth, endeavoring to recreate earth creatures and phenomena with their high-tech foster techniques. The thorough construction of plotline anchors CHANG’s art alteration. On one hand, CHANG portrays his future imagination by the spectacle of Parrot Man; on the other hand, through explicit time-space distance, he stresses the estranged relationships between Parrot Man and the modern society, meanwhile reflecting abnormality of all sorts of social phenomena through the spectacle of Parrot Man. Regarding multiple attempts of imitation and recreation, CHANG triggers the gates for viewers to reconsider on our habitus.

Compared to the elapsed time, CHANG focuses more on the future. Though targeting Parrot Man as the protagonist, in the recent two years, CHANG’s interest for the future world has gradually taken up the canvas. Arising from the premise of retrospecting the contemporary and imagining technology, CHANG expands boundaries of his fantasy world to the approaching future, accordingly posing queries through composition of amusing elements. CHANG’s works in 2016, for instance, applies the form of allegory. Within the future scene where Parrot Man dwells, uncanny occurrences of tech giants’ hegemony and technology deification are carved out, explicating CHANG’s fretting attitude toward the adoration of novelty, velocity, and the breakthrough of technology in the modern society.

Regarding past ten years’ of CHANG’s path of creation, seemingly emphasizing solely on spectacles, the themes of works differ in every stage of creations. As the focal point to inherit the past and usher into the future, this solo exhibition functions as a venue for retrospection and resettlement, in which CHANG arranges fractions left in his mind in the process of creation, reexamining them, and finally transforming them into art vocabularies, which will then be regulated neatly within the exhibited works. To break past limitations, pondering on the contemporary, and imagining the future, this exhibition forestalls the upcoming ten years of CHANG Teng-Yuan.

CHANG Teng-Yuan had won the first prize of Kaohsiung Awards, merit award of Taipei Art Awards, receiving multiple times of subsidies and grants. CHANG has hold solo exhibitions and joint exhibitions in London, New York, Koln, Seoul, Osaka, Tokyo, Taipei, etc., and had been invited to ISCP, New York, for residency in 2014. CHANG had just finished solo exhibition in Keumsan Gallery, Seoul, 2017. His works have been collected by a number of facilities, including Art Bank of National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts and Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts.

Media Contact: Mesha YANG    TEL: 02-2577-1676    Email: xinyuangallery.news@gmail.com

單人任務

投入專職創作十年，關於藝術，我還是不確定它的輪廓，但是，這也是藝術最吸引我的部分。

對我來說，藝術創作就像是在執行一個充滿未知、孤寂與可能性的單人任務。有時在濃霧中迷走，有時在暗夜微光裡探索，有時又像在深山裡迷航。因此，單人，並非表示人數，而是面對創作裡各種抉擇時的心裏狀態。而就像是一個循環，面對孤寂與未知的同時，無限的可能性也強烈地吸引著我前進。這項單人任務，越是充滿變數和不確定性，越是吸引我持續執行。

因此，此次個展，我把它想像成這趟單人任務的旅程整理。以回頭審視的方式，整理十年創作在我身體裡埋藏的線索，並試著把線索轉化成新的創作語彙，然後，把這些語彙編輯到各個適合它們的位置。

十年不長，卻也足以形成一趟旅程。如果把創作看成一趟旅程，那麼，我便是在這次的個展中整理與補給行李，然後繼續執行這趟迷人的任務。

《One-man Mission》

Dedicated as a full-artist for ten years, still I am unsure about the outline of art, which paradoxically turns out to be the most alluring characteristic of art for me.

For me, art creation is like executing a one-man mission, occupied with the unknown, desolation, and possibility. Sometimes I will be wandering in mist; sometimes I will be fumbling in dim lights; even sometimes I feel like getting lost in a ravine. The term, one-man, does not stand for the number of people, but the status in mind when one’s confronting different variants in the path of creation. And it feels like a cycle, in which I can be guided by the strong instinct of unlimited possibility, even when I am facing the threat of loneliness and uncertainty. As this one-man mission grows more capricious, I feel more enticed to keep executing it.

Therefore, I regard this solo exhibition as an arrangement of my journey of one-man mission. In the process of retrospection, I dispose evidences buried in my body in these ten years, trying to transform them into new vocabulary of art, and then, reediting them into proper positions.

Ten years, though not a long time, are long enough to be called a journey. If creation is regarded as a journey, I would be arranging and packing baggage in this solo exhibition, and finally executing this charming mission.