｜Artist Wu Tien-Chang(1956-) in front of his work ｜Wu Tien-Chang, We're All in the Same Boat, 2002, 120x205.4cm / 240x410.9cm, Laser print

Following his birth in Lugang(鹿港), Changhua County in 1956, Wu Tien-Chang moved to Keelung with his family and graduated from the Department of Fine Arts, Chinese Culture University in 1980. The craze for abstract expression swept Taiwanese art scene in the 1960s. Abstract painting remained part of the influential mainstream until the 1980s. Wu nonetheless was utterly determined to engage in pure visual arts and chose to portray Taiwan where he came of age in depth.

In the 1980s, Wu actively responded to sensitive political issues. He published the “Injury Series” and the “Four Eras Series” around the lifting of martial law. The former investigates the trauma inflicted by the authoritarian regime, whilst the latter intuitively criticizes the regime’s leaders. In the 1990s, Wu paid extra attention to socio-cultural issues, searching for the more subtle and ambiguous collective memories and scars shared among Taiwanese people. He also evolved his best-known “phony” mannerism in this period. From 2000 onwards, Wu began to draw inspiration from Taiwanese folk beliefs and classical literature, and construct the plots of his works from the perspective of human nature. He created a bittersweet tragicomic atmosphere with gorgeous, joyful casts and sets in the midst of profound sorrow and predestination taken as given.

Wu Tien-Chang’s “phony” mannerism is a consequence of resource scarcity when his career as an artist just started, which prompted him to massively use coarse, shiny, gaudy and cheap items that helped lower the cost of stage setting. Such an alternative approach is closely related to his upbringing. Wu was born in Keelung, a city where counterfeit luxury goods were thick on the ground when Taiwan was undergoing export expansion. The emergence of counterfeit products implies the culture of fraudulence, the usurpation of class, and the entanglement of people’s mentality in using them during the rapid industrialization and economic growth of Taiwan. Wu intentionally transposes these feelings in his works, demonstrating the mental state of “falsehood in the disguise of truth” and “phony” mannerism.

｜Life is a Fleeting Dream (partial)  ｜Wu Tien-Chang, Life is a Fleeting Dream, 2003, 120x200.3cm / 240x400.6cm, Laser print

The “phony” mannerism in Wu’s oeuvre also reflects his understanding and interpretation of Taiwanese history. Just as the products processed for export often stay only for a short period of time, we need neither to trace the origin nor to comprehensively survey the situation, which coincided with the mentalities of the successive colonial regimes in Taiwan.

—Pseudo-Instant Photography—

Wu Tien-Chang’s creative practice varies every decade. The first phase was graphic art in the 1980s, foremost the “Injury Series” and the “Four Eras Series.” The second phase was mixed media in the 1990s, characterized by the “Wounded Funeral Series,” the “Dream of Past Era Series” and the “Unwilling to Part with the Worldly Life Series.” After 2000, Wu began the third phase of his creative practice—digital images—epitomized by the “Shock．Shot Series.”

In the title of this series, the two terms “shock” and “shot” respectively denote “intimidation” and “photography.” Wu is fascinated by the story of “soul-arresting machine” in the history of Chinese photography. The story is set in China in the 19th century when Chinese people first encountered photography and thought that it would arrest people’s souls. Juxtaposing “shock” and “shot,” Wu treats the works in this series as his “funeral portraits,” the best pictures of his life that seal “time” and arrest his “soul.”

Wu had employed photography in the mixed media phase in the 1990s. Yet, in the “Shock．Shot Series,” he not only adopts photographic techniques, but also relies heavily on digital media for pre- and post-production.

｜Never Relex Morining or Night (partial)  ｜Wu Tien-Chang, Never Relex Morining or Night, 2008, 120x200.7cm / 240x402cm, Laser print

Wu uses digital media to make up for the shortcomings of photography. He firstly applied 3D software for pre-production, making numerous sketch simulations with the software. Then he invited the actors to the studio for rehearsal and photograph shooting. With the assistance of image editor, he disassembled, distorted, deformed and reorganized 50~70 negatives whilst fixed the flaws to bring the images to perfection, and finally output a finished work.

Wu once said, time is sealed when every detail is impeccable.

—Content / Narrative of Human Emotions—

Wu Tien-Chang calls himself a Taiwanese redneck artist. Everything he sees and hears as well as feels and learns comes from the island of Taiwan. Wu incorporated Taiwanese folktales and traditional beliefs in his “Shock．Shot Series,” and “post-edited” the characters in this series. The features of the dwarfs, Down’s syndrome, and developmental retardation are the results delivered through computer software.

Daoist fortune poems and the settings reflecting Wu’s gorgeous, psychedelic “phony” mannerism serve as the foil to Wu’s five brilliant works that take the form of image, including [Work Side by Side] (2001), [We’re All in the Same Boat] (2002), [Life is a Fleeting Dream] (2003), [Spirit Dreaming Conjuration] (2004), and [Spell to Shift Mountains and Overturn Seas] (2005). These works respectively narrate the stories about romance, brotherhood, reincarnation, and class oppression, constructing several tragic allegories of humanity.

｜Spririt Dreaming Conjuration (partial) ｜Wu Tien-Chang, Spririt Dreaming Conjuration, 2004, 120x177cm / 240x355cm, Laser print

The four pieces of works, namely [Do a Good Deed a Day] (2007), [Never Relax Morning or Night] (2008), [The Blind Fumble around in an Alley] (2008), and [By a Hair’s Breadth] (2009), seem to break away from the tragic interpretation about human predestination and cruel reality. In these works, the characters on stage create an atmosphere of dark comedy for entertaining themselves and others. Art critic Wang Chia-Chi once described [The Blind Fumble around in an Alley] as follows:

Chen Hsin, Studio of Pseudo Photography – Wu Tien-Chang (Taipei: Taipei Fine Arts Museum, 2012)

Wang Ching-Ling, “A Closer Look at Wu Tien-Chang’s Imagery,” Modern Art, no. 136, 2008, pp. 30-51.

Wang Chia-Chi, “Summoning Spirits through Art – Reading Wu Tien-Chang’s Theater of Lust and Desire,” Wu Tien-Chang 1984──2013 (Taipei: Tina Keng Gallery, 2015), p16-29.