Chan Yung-Jen (1991-)

 

Born in Taipei, Taiwan, Chan Yung-Jen is a M.F.A. student specialising in sculpture in Taipei National University of the Arts, Chan Yung-Jen has already been awarded with numerous significant contemporary awards, including Selected Prize in Kaohsiung Awards 2014 and The 11th Taoyuan Contemporary Art Award. The artist was invited to exhibit in ‘HAIKU-Sculpture 2015’ at Chiang Mai University in Thailand, ‘Hyper-Surreal - Treasures in the Pocket’ at National Central University Art Centre in 2015, ‘Bodily Folds: A Cross-generational Artistic Practice’ at 435 Art Zone as well as ‘Magical Play’ curated by Yiri Arts in 2014, and other joint exhibitions. Her innovative artworks continue to inspire and question the fundamental issues of living through different forms.

 

‘Relation’ remains the dominating theme in Yung-Jen’s art. She explores the relation between the body and the self, the self and the society, the individual and the group, one group and another, the society and the body. In 2015, her new work ‘Room x Room’— a 19.8m2 Gachapon machine presents a new way of exploring the relation between the individual and the particular era one belongs to. The machine signifies the spontaneous and uncontrollable manners of life and serves as the media through which the audience interacts with her work. Being not about selling comforting ornaments, Yung-Jen’s Gachapon reinstalls her belief into a micro view of a 19.8 square metre suite. 

 

Yung-Jen explores these issues by creating turnover models as replicas. During the making process, the interior model interacts with the exterior model to create a sense of fluidity, displaying the transformation between Yin (陰) and Yang (陽). This necessary technique that Yung-Jen applies to her work performs the simple idea of reproduction and is itself manifesting the complexity between the original matrix and the final product. The process mirrors the paradoxical relation found in every living creature and its relation to its system.