Chen Sung-chih (陳松志) might be an artist by profession but he’s also a master illusionist in the way he distorts found objects and gives them new meanings. One of the earliest lessons in optical illusions which many of us are introduced to during our childhoods is the rabbit-duck image. We may see the duck’s beak at first, but once we realize that it could also be bunny ears, our minds constantly switch back and forth between the two images — and that’s what it’s like with Chen’s artwork.
His solo exhibition Another Place (別境), which is on display at Taipei’s Project Fulfill Art Space (就在藝術空間) explores in particular, new uses for old, mundane household objects which would normally be thrown away and forgotten.
“People in Taiwan nowadays are interested in buying new things and chucking aside the old,” Chen tells the Taipei Times. “My goal,” he says, “is to help people appreciate the beauty of old objects by presenting them in a new manner and providing a new perspective.”
Photo: Dana Ter, Taipei Times
PERFECT IMPERFECTIONS
A perfectionist by nature, Chen is obsessed with creating subtle imperfections in his artwork. And it’s the most intricate details — those well-hidden “imperfections” — that jump at you once you finally see them.
From afar, Unrelated Accident (無關的意外) looks like a lonely mop sitting in a bucket in the middle of an empty room — and it’s easy for viewers to dismiss it as just that. Upon closer inspection, however, the “stick” is actually bamboo painted in blue, the “bristles” are made out of transparent clothing covers, the “water” bucket is in fact an oil can, and the “hair” on the ground is a net which Chen had painstakingly unwoven and re-arranged to look messy.
Photo: Dana Ter, Taipei Times
The second part of Unrelated Accident consists of the wall behind the “mop” which is covered in cloud-patterned wallpaper. Chen says he was drawn to the motif because “clouds don’t have a definitive form, and that’s just how we imagine them to look like.”
Chen also points out some dirty smudges on the wallpaper which are barely noticeable, explaining that he created them himself to give a feel that there’s where a painting used to be. “Even if something looks seemingly perfect, if you look closely enough, you’ll notice some imperfections,” Chen says.
Such is the case with Gate (穿越). In this piece, the ruptured holes piercing through the black and white canvases are made to resemble wear-and-tear in an old building. Behind the holes on the other side of the canvas, Chen glued transparent paper, saying how “it feels like you can enter the other side, but in reality, it’s not possible because there’s an unseen barrier.”
Photo: Dana Ter, Taipei Times
Chen says that he’s “destroyed” the canvas. But the holes appear to be cut with precise measurements revealing many hidden layers of paint, wood and threads beneath the surface — in fact, every little crack in the canvas is delicately executed.
USED GOODS
Chen’s use of dichotomies — old vs new, simplicity vs complexity, perfection vs imperfection — is even more striking in his work with wrinkled and torn magazine pages, which he found from old printing factories throughout Taiwan.
Photo: Dana Ter, Taipei Times
In Portrait (肖像), Chen rolls up crumpled magazine pages to create needle-shaped objects protruding through canvas. In reality, paper does not hurt anyone — it’s simply a reflection of how our feelings towards certain objects may change depending on the angle we choose to approach them from.
Moreover, although the “needles” look similar, they vary in size and color. “It may seem like people are conforming to the same things in life but essentially, every person is unique and different,” Chen says.
To create Borderline (邊緣), Chen tore off the spines from three magazines and glued the edges onto the top of three blank canvases. By doing so, he creates a contrast between the vast white space and the multi-colored, multi-textured borders that are noticeable only when seen up close. Again, Chen demonstrates that probing deeper and stretching our minds further enables us to uncover important hidden details.
Photo: Dana Ter, Taipei Times
For Chen, it’s all about showing how the same materials can be put to different uses. In Sailing (航) he crumples old magazine pages and stuffs them in new, store-bought socks. The winkled pages breathe life into the socks, giving them a new form and dimension.
Chen thinks of life — even the “life” of inanimate objects — as being cyclical.
“These magazines once contained new information,” he says. “But people threw them away when the information became outdated, and I wanted to show how all materials can have a second life — an art life.”
Photo: Dana Ter, Taipei Times
By recycling old items and reviving them with new materials, Chen transports his viewers to “another place” — and another state of mind — forcing us to see artistic beauty and value in used goods.
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