Taishin Bank Foundation for Arts and Culture

Jury's Comments for the Grand Prize Winner 

TANG Jo-hung, through his accomplished artistic expressions, offers astute insights into the distance between disasters and the daily life of the layperson. His unique and humorous aesthetic politics make this distance feel as close as an absurd drama. Amidst the pandemic and wars, the once-normal life suddenly disappeared and people around the globe are forced to face this situation together. The artist deploys a deft painting language and subtle narration together with free-flowing and chaotic strokes in scenes interwoven with both fantasy and reality, juxtaposing delightful and gloomy ambiences, and overlapping vibrant and dreary palettes. These works resonate with the inherent anxiety and fear that people are trying to evade and beckon concerns for the times we live in, which are indeed the core responsibilities of contemporary art. It is the jury’s wish that many years later as people look back on this edition of Taishin Arts Award, they would recognize the joy and tribulations of this era through TANG’s work.

Comments on the Finalists

Among flowy and powerful figural forms and contours of objects, TANG Jo-Hung creates scenes enriched with imageries. The seemingly carefree everyday landscape is embedded with a sense of ease and pleasantness, while exuding a slight melancholic atmosphere. In these images seemingly revolving around the figures, the scenes that appear to move the narrative forward are nevertheless not the key. Through the chaotic layering of brushstrokes, the visual singularity is unveiled repeatedly. The fantasy is a mere vehicle of this poetic and imaginative celebration for the understanding of life in forms and colors. The works featured in this solo exhibition are highly painterly and created with artistic mastery. In between the gestures of erasing and layering, the artist achieves captivating scenes with a slight sense of detachment, which also responds to the exhibition title denoting all the different feelings and emotions in this world. (Commentator / CHANG Ching-Wen)

Artwork Introduction 

Over the past couple of years, the world has entered a tumultuous time inflicted by the pandemic and wars. The exhibition theme reflects the artist’s lifestyle and changing state of mind during the pandemic, and echoes the treacherous situations around the globe as well as the ambiguous oscillation between economic and political crises and opportunities. The exhibition consequently reveals how the artist has responded to the time through changing his own state of mind. At the same time, it also displays the various aspects and absurdities of social disorder caused by disasters, delivering self-introspection and discussion about the time through humorous and playful narratives. In addition to the sense of relaxedness and freedom exuding from the artworks, the audience can also perceive the cruel reality of human disasters embedded therein, which serves as a unique comment on and conclusion to people’s common life experiences as they gradually re-emerging from the shadow of the pandemic.

About the Artist 

TANG Jo-Hung (b. 1975) was born in Taipei. He received his BFA from Tunghai University in 1998, and his MFA from the University of Salamanca in Spain in 2002. In the same year, he was awarded the First Prize at the prestigious Premio San Marco in Spain. He was also awarded the First Prize at the 22nd Kaohsiung Awards in 2005, the Liao Chi-Chun Oil Painting Award in 2008, and the Grand Prize at the Taipei Arts Awards in 2016. In 2018, he was invited by the Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts to hold his solo exhibition, Masterpiece Room; and in 2019, he presented his solo exhibition, Old Man. Fairy. and a bit of everything\, at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum. Tang now lives in Taipei.

Production Team 

Artist: TANG Jo-Hung 

Gallery Founder: Andre Lee

Gallery Director: Queena Chu