Art for the MTV generation

In his attempts to break the boundaries between high art and low art, Chen Shih-chiang (陳世強) has more than once brought his comic book-style paintings into fine-art galleries. Wandering About (漫遊記), Chen's current exhibition at Taipei's Hong Gah Museum (鳳甲美術館), shows 52 works made over the past three years, along with his latest Wandering About series of 16 paintings.

In his first solo exhibition in 2000, Chen revealed his unique style, presenting a series of pictures which together suggested a story. According to Chen, this was meant to reflect the way of thinking of the "MTV generation" -- the fragmentation of a storyline and the montage of disconnected scenes.

An author of comic books before turning his attention to painting, Chen incorporated a cartoon style into his painting in order to make his works more accessible to the public.

Twenty pieces in the exhibition are from Young Paradise (強氣少年), a series suggesting the stories of four young people from the lowest social stratum. They include a gangster, a frustrated salesman and a betelnut beauty and her girlfriend. In creating the series, Chen was inspired by night life in Taiwan. Seeing people unthinkingly lose themselves in the tacky charm of nightly entertainment and the illusion of happiness it provides, Chen created the four characters to embody the struggles people go through in an effort to crawl up the social ladder or sometimes just to survive.

Nana Betelnut (娜娜檳榔), a collage of four paintings, distills the betelnut beauty's life, with its illusion of glamour, hope and horror, into four images. In the last panel, the suggestion of death is particular striking. Similarly, Young Man (細漢仔) collage presents the life and imminent death of a gangster, with a strong undertone of nostalgia and loneliness.

The works in This is How the Story Goes (故事是這樣說的) series, created one year after Young Paradise, are more obscure in their narrative. Painted in red and blue, the collages are Chen's way of exploring the life of his generation, who grew up in the martial-law era but started their careers after martial law was lifted, giving them a very confused idea of society.

Wandering About is something of a departure from Chen's comic style. The bolder composition and use of colors in these abstract pictures give viewers more visual delight than his previous works. And with this, even if you don't find them particularly inspiring, they are visually appealing, rather like comic books.