Self-exoticism: Su Meng-Hung solo exhibition

Dates

8 MAY - 25 SEPTEMBER 2021

Reception

8 MAY, 4:30 p.m.

Tina Keng Gallery  1F, No.15, Ln. 548, Ruiguang Rd., Neihu Dist., Taipei 114, Taiwan

Drawing a parallel between the painting language from Xiang Nai Er, his 2019 solo exhibition, Su continues his pursuit of realist imagery through craftsmanship, as well as his use of traditional flora and fauna paintings and decorative patterns in Self-exoticism, his latest solo exhibition. Layers upon layers of paint are applied onto the canvas through flat-coloring and screen-printing before the artist sands them down in an attempt to cancel the materiality of the pigments themselves, while concealing the physical labor and traces of time during the art-making process. From two-dimensional painting to three-dimensional objects, Self-exoticism explores the curious sensual pleasures of objects themselves, and poses a question: Do the elaborate, many layers and coatings wrestle with a peculiar cultural experience? The Bonhams London’s auction site lists a lot of four Qing-dynasty cloisonné enamel flower panels previously owned by Lady Anne M.S. Durston. Having chanced upon this web page, the artist couldn’t help but imagine: When Lady Durston looked at the object that had traveled so far from an exotic, distant culture, a feeling of wonder arose in her, who marveled at the style, motif, and palette of this splendid relic. This exoticism mirrors the fantasy of replacing localization, estranged from the object’s state of being, nestling this longing in an otherness that transports the viewer to a heterogeneous space.

For two of his latest works View With Perspective 1 and View With Perspective 2, Su has adopted the technique of stretching a thangka canvas, and printed on the canvas landscape paintings that are usually exported to the West, as a contrast to the taste of the literati and aristocracy, embodied in the Manual of the Mustard Seed Garden, which is screen-printed on the other side. Two similar mise-en-scènes juxtapose with each other as modular templates, while confronting the viewer in the form of an object. The shifting perception of cultures becomes the content of the work that is meant to be consumed. A visible object allows the viewer to form a comprehension system as they appreciate the object, while opening up multiple temporal dimensions. In his essay “Of Other Spaces” (Des espaces autres), Foucault states that history should be viewed as a deployment (dispositif) of various heterogeneous forces in dissemination or accumulation, a layering or arrangement of heterotopias. The identification system of the viewer transcends art history and the usual way of seeing, where the viewer distinguishes cultures embedded in a work of art, thereby creating a hierarchy of cultures, whether knowingly or not. If we view Su’s work via this approach, we would find ourselves amidst the inner network of culture, knowledge, and imagery, alienation and assimilation interwoven.

A heterogeneous and conflicting force exists in contemporary visual experience, where viewers identify cultures and symbols as they appreciate a work of art, in an attempt to return to a historical approach that belongs to the particular times when the work was made and enter an open or closed system. Appropriation, emulation, layering, and sanding: If we see the blending of East and West in Giuseppe Castiglione’s painting style, then Su Meng-Hung responds to the re-amalgamation of Eastern and Western craft histories with such techniques as simulation, xipi (literally meaning rhinoceros hide, a term describing marbled lacquer surface, as layers of differently colored lacquer applied to an uneven surface), mother-of-pearl inlay, even cloisonné, to render a physical texture of the pigments. From luminosity, distance, to perspective, with a palette of black, green, red, and golden, Su’s decorative acrylic paintings are sandpapered and dewrinkled, texture of the paint polished flat, as if posing a question on the production of art within capitalism: Does an exquisite work of art entice the viewer from its artistic quest with the divergence between its appearance and essence?

The nuanced shifts between material and non-material, existence and disappearance, space and non-space, in a way, echo today’s contemporary life, which is profoundly immersed in the experience of reading on a mobile device such as a pad, instead of observation with the naked eye. A kind of fracture resides in the observer’s visual experience in the act of mirroring, not limited to the cultural identification, but also rendering a two-dimensional image as a space that is tangible and perceivable. Whether it is an expressive posture, or a decorative collage, Su Meng-Hung’s Self-exoticism holds up a mirror that reflects what is foreign in the cacophony. The viewer discerns culture, refinement, and kitsch in polysemous heterotopias that juxtapose with each other, while relentlessly projecting the self onto the exoticized mirror as a participant.

About Su Meng-Hung 

Su Meng-Hung works across such mediums as painting, silkscreen printing, installation, and sculpture in a creative process that manifests his attempt to transform traditional Chinese imagery of flowers and birds into a visual vocabulary of gaudy and grandiose icons, or into a cultural language of sensuous and appealing symbols. He often adapts elements of flowers and birds from the work of late Qing-dynasty painters. These visual symbols are not merely driven by the artist’s desire to ridicule social codes, or to popularize the symbols in mass culture. In fact, the flowers and birds embody the taste of the aristocracy and literati. Su’s body of work is deeply informed by his appropriation of Jesuit missionary and painter Giuseppe Castiglione’s paintings. The appropriation of Castiglione’s imagery in Su’s work evokes the emotional states of the artists 250 years ago when Castiglione painted Barn Swallow and Green Peach Blossom, Lotus Flower and Butterfly, and Flower in a Vase, when Shen Zhenlin painted Flower Painting God, or when Wang Chengpei painted Peonies. Even with aspirations thwarted at the imperial court, these artists conveyed an indescribable elation glimmering in each brushstroke in their portrayal of kitsch or elegance — the same kind of bliss and delight that reside in the work of Su Meng-Hung today.

Su Meng-Hung graduated from the National Changhua University of Education, Taiwan, and Goldsmiths College, University of London. He received his PhD from the Tainan National University of the Arts, Taiwan. Su’s notable solo exhibitions include Self-exoticism, Tina Keng Gallery, Taipei, Taiwan (2021); Xiang Nai Er, Tina Keng Gallery, Taipei, Taiwan (2019); A Painter of the Empire, Tina Keng Gallery, Taipei, Taiwan (2016); Poppy, Golden Lotus, Dopamine, Tina Keng Gallery, Taipei, Taiwan (2012); and Unreachable Blooming, IT Park, Taipei, Taiwan (2007). He has also participated in international exhibitions and biennials, including Dialogue on Printmaking — The Taiwan-U.S. Exchange Exhibition, Taiwan Academy, Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in New York, New York, U.S. (2016); Taipei Biennial (2014), Taiwan; and Jam — Cultural Congestions in Contemporary Asian Art, South Hill Park Art Centre, Bracknell, U.K. (2009).

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