When viewing the works of Tang Jo-Hung, first we may be attracted by his painting skills which brim with talent. The visual language of points, lines, and planes, as well as paint, pigment, and asphalt form the colors, outlines, scratches, coatings, and pasting in his works… The marks created from different approaches have evolved into a feast for the eyes. Subsequently, you notice the recurring images such as the artist himself, the dog, flowers, and especially large dogs running, walking, sitting, or looking back at the world, as if telling fables of life. After taking a long and hard look, you will discover that the most intriguing and mesmerizing part about Tang’s work go beyond the aforementioned forms and images to include an ambiguous attitude which is hidden behind his works, as well as Tang’s personal style emotional and conscious signs.
Born in 1975, Tang Jo-Hung studied in Fu Hsin Trade & Arts School, the Fine Arts Department of Tunghai University, and got his Master’s degree from Salamanca University in Spain. Tang has a solid background from art school while his innovation of form and material as well as development of visual presentation and extension in his subject matter has won him the grand prize in the Kaohsiung Awards as well as the Liao Chi-Chun Oil Painting Award. Tang’s paintings are mostly related to his surroundings in life. The theme of his paintings is often traditional, including people, animals, still life, and scenery. However, Tang is able to integrate Eastern aesthetics with Western skills and approaches to showcase diversity under a simple theme. His works brim with a sense of spontaneity and a kind of a literati spirit rarely seen in young artists. Starting from 2002, with the collections Self and The Dog (Cookey), Tang’s artistic style has become distinct and sophisticated.
The Dialogue between the “self ” and the “dog”
If art was thought of as a channel for artists to realize their goals, then Tang’s selfportrait is definitely a portrayal of the overlap or connections between himself and art. Created in 2002, the People．Self collection uses spontaneous brushstrokes as well as layers of paint to dissect the self of the artists on canvas. These selfportraits break away from physical reality but portray in a less substantial way the artist’s reflection of the self. Among the collection, there is People．Self , created with black, white, and gray brushstrokes to form a unique silhouette. There is also People．self brother , which consists of impassioned lines and singlecolor images. Further, People - self dog consists of the mixture of human and dog to explore further into one’s soul. Even though neither the silhouette or outline of men nor their body features are clear in the paintings; yet with a strong style of Expressionism, these images are consistent with Tang’s reflections of life, and could be considered a peek into the artist’s emotions and soul.
While Tang was peeking into his own soul with the People．Self collection, the image of his dog Cookey, which was hidden in his paintings, also continued to develop in the Cookey collection. (Note 1)As the artist continued to observe Cookey and to use it in his artworks, this image of the dog gradually developed to become the embodiment of the artist himself. Tang and his dog, in the beginning at the two separate ends of a spectrum, became inseparable with the artist’s portrayal of their relationship. In 2005, Tang’s Cookey, The Dog Heading Back won him the first prize in the Kaohsiung Awards. The winning works Cookey, The Dog Heading Back and Cookey and Flowers in Vase were done as the artists painted himself to manifest the spirit rather than the form of the dog while personifying the dog so that through actions such as “running”, “moving forward”, “sitting”, and “looking back”, the dog could tell stories of emotions and of life. Among these, “looking back” is the most important movement. Just as the artist himself said, “looking back” captures Cookey under a fixed state, a state which deviates from point zero…” (Note 2) At the same time, looking back resembles a pause in life, taking a break to contemplate, or a punctuation mark of life, giving us endless opportunities for imagination. Here, the image of a dog is elevated to a spiritual height, which is the key to why the dog in Cookey, The Dog Heading Back has such a distinct image from other dogs.
The Joy and Sadness under a life of Conscious Patterns
As Tang moved to the UK at the end of 2006, changes started to occur in his artworks. During this phase, he worked extensively on the Flower in Vase collection. Different from his previous Cookey collection, here Tang started working on 120cm particle boards, while combining the image of the spade and human body into his works. By personifying his subject matters, his works bore the form of fantasies which go beyond our imagination. However, the essence of these works was not the development of the images of the vase of flowers but Tang’s initial attempt to add diamond symbols into his paintings. Sleeper in the Dream II and People．Self – Consciousness pattern．Clown were the first works in which Tang incorporated symbols of diamond. Though these works were not very sophisticated at the time, they became the theme and motivation for Tang’s later works.
In Sleeper in the Dream II, a huge white head of a man is covered by a Islamicstyle dome with diamond shapes as its decor. In front of the man stands a horse, while the horse and the man gaze at each other in an indescribable way. Surrounding this image is a black desert, while there is a whale-like shape in the far end of the picture and two dogs which looks like mother and son, isolated. The whole image is literary and brims with sentimentality, which is something rarely found in the works of Tang’s counterparts. The piece People- Miserable Man, finished in 2008, incorporated more ingenuity in terms of both content and form. The style of the painting resembles the style of Cubism while the images also look like the patterns on the man’s clothing. Under a melancholy atmosphere, the sadness of the man with a twisted expression is fully reflected.
To Tang, diamonds are a mysterious symbol, permeating into his work in recent years (Note 3). If we look at Asleep 2 (2007), the diamonds were still a must to make the form of the image more complete. However, in his 2009 piece Dog man -Gems Turn into Stone as Time Passes, diamonds have become the dominating element which composes the theme and the form of image. In this piece, the restless diamond patterns were combined together diversely to create dynamic images which dominated the whole picture. In Dog man - Gems Turn into Stone as Time Passes, the real and unreal images intersect while the 2D and 3D images are combined with the theme and symbols to make up the larger picture. The twenty pieces of wood pieced together also opens up a dialogue between the materials and the symbols, adding to the vagueness and mysteriousness of the piece.
Aside from Dog man - Gems Turn into Stone as Time Passes, various kinds of juxtaposition also appear in Tang’s other works from 2009. Some of these works include Big Tailoring Suit and Mountain Range, The British Mountains and People - Self - The Girl Wearing a Flower. Big Tailoring Suit and Mountain Range is the portrayal of a black suit with a white flower sticking out of its pocket, resembling the image of clothes and sleeves, but also similar to white flowers growing out of the black and brownish soil. The intentional compression created by the suit and the mountain in the back as well as the spade has created a kind of illusion, since viewers are unsure whether the image is two-dimensional or threedimensional. Also, through these illusions, the two unrelated images of the suit and the mountain are connected together through art and through imagination, striking a new balance between oil paint, brushstrokes, images, and illusions. This new relationship generated from patterns and painting has resulted in wondrous beauty, challenging our traditional way of viewing time and space. From the early period of self-exploration to making use of consciousness and symbols, Tang has not only reinvented himself but also bridged the gap between his art and the outside world. At the same time, through the use of signs and symbols, Tang has found another path different from the former way of using versatile lines, colors, and patterns to express various emotions and his unique style - one which incorporates both joy and sorrow.
Conclusion
The dialogue between “the self ” and “the dog” has continued in Tang’s works - be it the exchange between men and dog in the collections People．Self, Cookey, The Dog Heading Back or the integration of the man and the dog in Dog man - Gems Turn into Stone as Time Passes or People-Self, Twinity: Coexsistance, this dialogue has remained evident. The form of Tang’s work have transformed from simply the expression of emotions to the creations of patterns and signs of one’s consciousness. These simplified or fragmented elements carry a sense of mysteriousness against the clear image and display order under a complicated state. Under a state of confusion, perfection is achieved, while the artist’s inner self and personal value in the real world are reflected.
Art is one product of human emotions and therefore needs to communicate certain messages (Note 4). The mutual foundation for communication is found in the emotional signs within Tang’s works. Be it the self, the dog, the flowers in the vase, or the dog-man, all are the implicit interpretation which the artist has of himself and the world. Further, whether these signs can touch the viewers and be understood by them will be the key to whether they will actually work to get the meanings across. Therefore, how to use the existing symbols as well as the newly-built relationship between images and writing (Note 5) to build up a more convincing system so that viewers will be able to take themselves to the next level in visual pleasure as well intellectual depth will definitely be an issue Tang’s needs to work on in the future.
(Published in Artco, July, 2009, pp. 206-209 and translated by Grace Chih-chieh Huang)