TKG+ is pleased to present Romance of NG, a group exhibition curated by Huang Chien-Hung featuring works by Chiang Chung-Lun, George Folk, Ni Xiang, Cing Chen-De, Chang Li-Re, Chen Po-I, Chen Pin-hua, Takahiko Suzuki, Teng Chao-Ming, and Su Yu-Hsien. The ten artists’ respective reactions to the topic, in forms of installations, photographs, and videos, are on view.

Taiwan’s contemporary art scene became globalized in the late 1990s as a result of the influx of institutional resources, human resources, and ideas influenced by the expanding local economy. Examining the artistic and creative realm during that era, young artists back then were energized by the new subject of globalization. The artistic expression of “NG (No Good)” is a syndrome, rather than a conceptual or ideological reference, that engages in conversation with subjects of contemporary art and social science. NG embodies the attitude, necessity, technicality, and strategy of being in dialogue. Particularly in Taiwan, NG becomes a stylized, temporary, and confrontational ethos. This notion is initiated by a conflicting sentimental struggle between admiration and rejection of an aesthetic model. Subsequently, this innate desire to converse and interact is further driven by the mechanics of a repressed cultural history.

The poetic creation process inspired by NG has been omnipresent in the last ten years. Nonetheless, we face an imbalanced dynamic between psychoanalysis and economy. The latter becomes a machine for demand that continuously generates rhetoric, which then questions the authority of power. Ultimately, the inequality shapes a new dominance and even colonialism at times. The discussion of NG turns into a psychoanalytical script- while acting as a cultural interpretation of internal conflicts; it is also an imprint of rejection. Romance of NG proposes an overarching verdict in retrospective of Taiwan’s contemporary art scene in the past decade.

*image (left)
© Chiang Chung Lun
Courtesy of the artist and TKG+