Art Experience Gallery is delighted to present ‘Play Manuals’ featuring new works by emerging Taiwan artist Shih Yung Chun, his first Hong Kong solo exhibition.
When was the last time when something ordinary amuses you in everyday life? And when was the last time you enjoyed the pleasure of play? Taiwan artist Shih Yung Chun composes his paintings into a visualized mythical space with collage of his memories and imaginations. The ‘Tim Burton’ like scenarios in his paintings are all ad hoc set up in reality and photographed before appearing on canvas. Shih has been collecting vintage toys and objects for some years, so often they become important characters in his work. The surrealist scenes made from the conjunction of items and events not normally associated with each other, resulting in something both playful and dynamic. The challenge to the reality in his work may reveal the secret desires and resistance of the unconscious of both the artist and audience.
Some of his scenes are set in his friends’ or his own house, and he and his friends make occasional appearances. The fictionalized phenomena performs a frozen moment interlace with both imaginative and realistic ingredients, when Shih tries to turn the routine reality into a spacey playground for self-entertainment, and creates a universe parallel to our own. It seems that rules and logic do not apply to Shih’s paintings, where he invents a series of fun and original games to play with himself and his audience. The dramatic yet believable everyday scenes lead us to rediscover a pure pleasure of play, and release us temporarily from our serious life.
The story began in Hong Kong in summer 2013, when Shih spent a month for an artist-in-residence program. He was exploring this unfamiliar city on a bike around the area’s streets in Sheung Wan (an old residential area), where he discovered a small antique toy store fills with treasure of old toys. The inspiration of Shih’s series of paintings ‘Daily Toy Sets’ started from there. He travels around the world with his dolls, figurines, masks, and unknown old objects conducting all sorts of absurd experiments, documents everyday life from a fun and creative perspective. His role as a painter and traveler reminds us the precious of extraordinary details in ordinary life, which is highly contagious in his paintings.
About Shih Yung Chun
Born in 1978 in Taiwan. Shih Yung Chun was graduated from National Taiwan University of Arts in 2003. Shih did not rush himself to become an artist, instead he went to travel around the world after graduation. Shih started to paint more seriously as an artist in 2009 and immediately received a lot of attention from the art scene. His inspiration comes from everyday life, yet his work is not intended to reflect the reality, in fact, he composes the paintings into a visualized mythical space with collage of his memories and imaginations. The surrealist scenes made from the conjunction of items and events not normally associated with each other, resulting a series of ‘Tim Burton’ like scenarios and offer the audience a rather dramatic visual enjoyment and left an unforgettable impression at first sight.
Shih has participated in numerous exhibitions and art fairs in Asia and Europe, and was an art award winner of Geisai Taiwan#3 in 2011. He is now living and working as a full time artist with his beloved French bulldog in Taipei.
