Oil and acrylic on canvas
149.5x115.5cm(Framed)
Mind Set Art Center is delighted to announce JHONG Jiang-Ze’s major exhibition in the following two months. It is the first solo with MSAC, which will include the presentation of the artist’s latest paintings (Part1/Theatre of the Absurd) and of a dynamic structure on his production (Part2/Wall of Muses). Theatre of the Absurd is composed of pieces inspired by images of ‘Tarot’ and ‘Discabolo’. Wall of Muses tends to emphasize the concept of open studio, transforming the exhibiting space from a white cube to an artist working spot. Through showing a more realistic status of art production and studio scene, we attempt to create a different dialogue and thoughts between the point of exhibition promotion and of art making. Furthermore, it allows viewers to trace the artist’s path of muse within his practice.
“As an artist, I care about inspiration seeking and reconstruction instead of archaeology. The absurdity comes from the twist of original meanings and generation of whole new meanings. Absurdity is muse; muse is absurdity.” －JHONG Jiang-Ze
Living in a times of that information is extremely easy to access as if a multiple dimension, JHONG tries to open a conversation between human and the imagery history via inspirational mediums given by external world, such as movies, art history, some online photographs or one of his old works. From his ’Self-incarnation’ series (2004), the artist has faced the external and objective world via the stand of body perception. He enters through body perspective and created a portrait of anonymity, discovering the subject of spiritual personality in a closed world of self. Ten years later, JHONG turns to embrace the outer world, letting himself out to search inspirations. Theatre of the Absurd constructed by various images is the beginning of this journey. Just like in the work of My Muses, he used an ingenious rabbit to represent flying muse that shows the process of how artists catch inspirations. This sort of intuitional instinct through pure imagery arousal and of intention that detached from narrative as well as pictorial symbolization is as what the art critics Zian Chen addressed, “Similar methods of breaking up time can be found in another series that deconstructs tarot images, a method that reminds viewers of the playfulness in Italian novelist Italo Calvino’s Il castello dei destini incrociati: both of them seek inspiration by disassembling tarot cards. They took apart the internal orders of the images then reconstruct the sequences to their own requirements.
Essencially, these creative processes may well be sum up as the revelation of their seeking of muse. And muse, for Jhong Jiang Ze, is an inspiration out of spontaneity; therefore, it has nothing to do with linear time.