Exhibition｜A Journey of Lightness: 25 Years of Hantoo
Date｜07.22.2023-11.12.2023
Veune｜Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts
WU Hui-fang (Curator, Exhibition Department, KMFA)
The Hantoo Art Group is an art collective of significant importance in Taiwan’s contemporary art history. This group exhibition is intended to review and commemorate the landmark 25-year development of Hantoo from its establishment up to the present.
Hantoo was founded in 1998 by nine artists: LU Tien-yen, YANG Mao-lin, CHEN Zuei-wen, WU Tien-chang, LU Hsien-ming, KUO Wei-kuo, LEE Ming-chung, YANG Jen-ming, and LIEN Chien-hsing with the mission to bring about a renaissance of painting against the dominance of installation art in the 1990s. This mission is aptly reflected by its Chinese name, “Hantoo”, which literally means “to fight for painting”. Actually, Hantoo is more than a group of painting advocates. It is also an “elitism continuance” of Taipei Art Group, the leading painting society in the 1980s which ended officially in 1997. As a result, Hantoo’s early members were all mid-aged and young artists already established or emerging in Taiwan’s art world in the 80’s. Even though some of its members later left (such as LU Tien-yan in 2005), Hantoo was joined by new members: LAI Hsin-lung, TANG Tang-fa, TU Wei-cheng, DENG Wen-jen, CHANG Ling, and CHEN Ching-yao, who are now all well-established and well-recognized artists.
During the 25 years of Hantoo from 1998 to the present (2023), things have changed both externally in terms of political, economic, and cultural conditions in Taiwan and internally within the art group in terms of each member’s personal state of mind and life stage. The period from the mid 80’s to the whole 90’s is an important era for the development of art environment in Taiwan. There were two major types of artists in this era: artists who paid more attention to the social environment in Taiwan and artists who returned to Taiwan after their exposure to Western influences abroad. The members of Hantoo apparently belonged to the former type. Most of them received their education before the lift of martial law. Because of their strong sense of responsibility for their time and society, their works during this period were often critical of Taiwan’s political and social phenomena, such as the MADE IN TAIWAN series on political issues by YANG Mao-lin and the giant portraits in Four Eras by WU Tien-chang accusing the strongman politics in Taiwan. Because of this characteristic, the works by Hantoo’s members were generally very heavy back then.
From the lift of martial law in the 80’s to the 90’s, the members of Hantoo used strong and impactful visual symbols to represent and challenge Taiwan’s society in its vehement political and economic transitions. Then amidst the doomsday anxiety about the new millennium, they continued to move ahead with solidarity in their “fight for painting” in the name of “Hantoo”. In the 21st century, life is drastically different with the exponential development of digital technology whether we accept it or not. In response to the changes in the new century, several senior members of Hantoo went back to school for further studying and learning. The recent COVID-19 pandemic around the world has brought a strong sense of uncertainty to the life of each of us, changing our ways of living and thinking. This exhibition aspires to represent the development of Taiwan’s contemporary art over a quarter of a century by focusing on the 25 years of Hantoo, a contemporary painting group active from the 1990s to the present, and on the transitions of life and artistic creation of each of its members from the 90’s, mid stage, and recent stage.
The most senior member of Hantoo, YANG Mao-lin, now 70 years old, once described Hantoo as a “tightly structured and loosely disciplined fraternity-like art group”. These young and fearless artists back then are now in or beyond their middle age and their works have become “lighter” in terms of contents and forms along with the passage of time and the evolution of their life experiences. In contrast to the heaviness in the earlier works by Hantoo members, such “lightness” means more precision and certainty other than ambiguity and randomness. This exhibition aims to demonstrate the transformation this group of “tough” artists have gone through over the past 25 years, which is a journey of lightness in the fight against the heaviness of life.
