Another piece, Silly Goose by Chang Geng-hwa (張耿華), is based on the interaction between real geese and geese robots. The room contains three versions of a robot goose, truly grotesque machines made of real, flapping, stuffed goose wings, stuffed geese's heads and necks, and a mechanical wheel and gear assemblies that keep them rolling around in circles and flapping. In addition, a video projected onto the wall shows one of these cyborgs unleashed into a real gaggle, where it elicits reactions of running and honking in its pseudo-companions.
Even though geese are dumb by human standards, a human viewer still has trouble discerning what is really going on. Among those questions raised in the work are: what is the power of a fake or clone? And how much ability do (we) real McCoy's have for spotting such impostors?
From the toy side of things, Yang Chung-ming's (楊中銘) Memory Box looks at a childhood caught between reality and toydom. A crib, toys and baby furniture fill the room, but the pictures on the wall are of Lego people on vacation (and like real people on vacation, they're obviously posing). Providing further dimension, a View-Master holds slides of the Lego-ites in the more intimate setting of their home. Unlike the posed vacation photos, these snaps show scenes of dysfunction, like when Lego mom and Lego dad sit on opposite sides of the couch as they watch TV.
Hung Dong-lu (洪東祿) also looks at toys as objects more revealing of the adult than the childlike. His most recent series of Cibachrome prints shows a sexy warrior princess, who's sort of a cross between Lara Croft and the women of Sega's Virtual Fighter video game. She poses with guns that approximate both water canons and lasers, and she stands in the middle of a bombed out and burning vision of New York's Times Square. For the record, Hung created these images just a few months in advance of September's terrorist attacks.
Also included in the show are a record of male pregnancy, documentation of a week of dieting and a chapel illuminated by a stained glass window that only after the second or third hard look is found to be made out of TVs. There is also a giant inflatable dog with its head quite literally up its ass.
Not all of these ideas are new. Some of them have been kicking around in other versions, in other works and in other shows for years now. But when Labyrinth is taken as a whole, the new investigation into real instincts and real childlike behavior redeem its caricatures. Like Peng and his dogs, the show dares to point out that if you turn a cartoon dog back into a real dog, you won't understand it nearly as well.
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