HAN-CHUN CHEN EDUCATION AIC Product Design Pre-Master Diploma Program 2017 to 2019
EC Design School AIC ‑ Taipei, Taiwan
BSc: International Business 2012 to 2016
National Taiwan University ‑ Taipei, Taiwan
To create, painting and writing are the first two media I thought of using, which both origin from my obsession for seeing and reading since childhood. Using those as a starting point to the world of fine art, extending to humanities such as sociology and philosophy, and to diverse media such as sculpture and photography. Art is clips of scene in life, individual’s voice to be heard, and personal response to difficulties of community as a whole.
Still objects, pastel May, 2019
Sculptue: Self-portrait
A FEMININE PORTRAIT
“Being a woman is not a hobby or a pet interest of mine. You get to drop in…… But when you move on to your next thing, I’m still here.” —— Diane Nguyen, “Bojack Horseman” When I thought about doing a self-portrait, I listed down essential things and events I met in life. Subsequently, just as this quote from the popular Netflix animation series has described, I have found out that everything in my life — including choices I made and difficulties I encountered, are actually, in every way, gender-related.
Growing up in a christian family under a rather conservative asian cultural context, as a girl, I often experienced people constantly reminding me about this fact through direct or indirect ways. “A feminine portrait” was created from these complex feelings about being a woman. A state of being fluid In contrast to the fixed and rational ways of using language under traditional patriarchy rules, a new “fluid style” of conveying thoughts and feelings was proposed in order to tell women’s own stories. I roughly sketched to express this “fluidity” in these photos below. Five words I chose five keywords (fluidity, void, gaze, fly, language) from the “Postmodern Feminist” chapter of the book “Feminist Theories and Genre”. These words are not a conclusion of me or gender issues I met, and there is no simple conclusion for that. They only represent some of the aspects, being attached to the sculpture in random order, which also reflects the fluidity and arbitrary character here. Move with the air flow A bit like a wind chime, the sculpture turns and wiggles along with the air flow. In order to achieve the fluidity characteristic, I used iron wires as the backbone of my work and it allowed me to shape a space within the sculpture that continuously alters while looking from different directions. Moreover, all parts of the sculpture were only held together, not glued and fixed, hence remain movable just like fluid.
An Island That Floats created Feb, 2019
There are over 269 peaks above 3,000m in Taiwan, in fact, 70% of the island is composed of mountains. As a person who was born and raised in Taiwan, life is deeply related to mountains and sea. Even if you don’t visit them often, you can still sense their present through the humid weather, frequent earthquake, typhoon attacks, and the winding roads you take while heading to eastern Taiwan. On the other hand, the different perspectives about Taiwanese national identity and the political suppression of Taiwan’s international space have brought potential instability, which to me is a state of floating. An island made of mountains while floats on the water — it’s a combination of two contradicting concepts: the quiet, stable mountains and the active, moving water. I try to translate this floating status into a set of sofa.
One of the ispiration images was a topograph‑ ic map — which was the first impression of mountains while I learned about them back in geography classes.
Forming The form was inspired by Mt. Jade South Peak and I used soft clay during the forming process in order to catch the unique posture of ridge lines. For another attempt, acrylic pouring technique was applied to give fluidity and color complexity. It went well and surprisingly displayed the original image of a topographic map. The chair in the front is mostly greenish, while the one in the back has a tint of blue and purple, as it naturally looks like from a far view. When sit and lie on the sofa, you are embraced by the unique landscape of an island that floats. The curvy surface gives users unlimited ways of lying, allowing them to rest their body in the hollow while soaking in the beauty and serenity of nature. Coloring To paint the surface, at first I tried to use “paper mache” technique. I painted on xuan paper (rice paper) and tested the outcomes of 5 kinds of xuan paper. However, as I finished the first layer of paper mache on my mini model, it did not turn out as I thought. The pattern was fine, but the image of mountain and water was unclear. (paper mache process on the right page)
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Floobo Days, Happy Days
A short fiction from a larger structure Being the most famous feature of Floobo Park, there are up to 12 roller coasters, from huge ones to mini ones, old-style wooden structures to fancy high-tech metal railways. I work in a restaurant under the oldest wooden roller coaster at the innermost part of the park. When the roller coaster is operating, it makes such a loud noise that I basically have to shout to customers while taking their orders.
As a has-been amusement park where the number of visitors significantly declines over the years, most of the food sold in Floobo are convenient, ready-made meal such as frozen shrimp shells rice, fried fluff-tail sparrow and the clichéd double-L burger: a thin slice of lava lizard meat topped with a fried lava turkey egg that is frozen and defrost multiple times. Mayonnaise is the only thing they gave generously, I suppose it’s because in this way, no one will ever find out those buns had already expired for a long time. Floobo does not offer employees’ meals. However, people in food and beverage department know their ways to get free food. I was very nervous the first time I stole and was afraid to be caught by supervisors. Leina, who worked at Floobee Creamery taught me how to fake the payment, “Just give me your credit card,” she said, took my card in her hand, swiped it with the side that has no magnetic strip and gave me a piece of receipt. “I collect them when people don’t want it,” she said casually.
Moreover, she uses those receipts to fake refund from time to time, stealing money from the cashing machine. The day I had my first free ice cream, I finally felt not as miserable. I had the classic gravy-cake flavor, the gravy was rich and juicy, dripping down from the soft, smooth sorrel cake. It was out of this world, in a Floobo-park-standard. “Floobo days, happy days.� That was just a dump slogan printed on my uniform, as least I thought so. I never expected I would miss the life in Floobo until scientist made a huge breakthrough, and the government announced the law that everyone should only consume nutrition pills, making all the other food illegal, then gradually disappeared.
ABOUT TIME
How do we deal with the endless sense of anxiety in time? People nowadays are used to organizing their daily lives within the 24-hour system, constantly chased by deadlines, mourning the past and worrying about the future. However, neither the past nor the future belong to us, as the present is the only thing we truly own. Before the sexagesimal time system was established, human sensed the passing of time through observing changes occurred in nature. In that time, the answer to the question �What time is it?� is vague and subjectively interpreted by individuals. In this design, I try to bring back the primitive way of measuring time, in order to pull users out of the rules of the existing civilization.
“driftwood, waves, moss, and...”
“Blur the defi
While digging time is just a s scribe changes to be anxious
finition of time�
down to the essence, simple term to des, which we don’t have about.
As light being an important factor for moss to grow, cellophane was used to alter colors of light while photographing.
The device serves as a reminder of time defined by nature. We all are taught to make good use of time, which, in other words, meant filling your time with useful things. However, the truth is that we all have our own pace of living, and it can be tiring to follow others’ all the time. Sound of waves is played to replace the tick-tock sounds of regular clocks. The colors and directions of each flake will vary with time in a day. Users can get a rough idea of time but will not know the exact hour and minute.
As a piece of driftwood lying on the bea occur around it every moment— waves, ty and sunlight make it look different eve
Scales are attached to imitate moss on d the final device, they will all be black at m gradually turning green at dawn. (In orde transformation , it should be connected
The device will be able to link on wifi an formation about wind speeds at the nea that it can generate sound of waves acco
ach, changes , wind, humidiery instant.
driftwoods. In midnight, then er to see the to electricity.)
nd receive inarest coast, so ording to it.
CIRCUS OF SKINS We buy new clothes and accessories every month, and storage has become a serious problem for most of us. Is there a perfect way to solve this? created Jan, 2018
We could surely get a larger closet for storage, but as we keep shopping, there will never be enough space. The ultimate solution is simple: buy less, and get rid of those we don’t really need. This can be hard to achieve under the recent trend of fast fashion, in which clothes nearly become disposal, while our lust is never fulfilled. A series of clothes storage furnitures were created under the rethinking to fast fashion, along with a protest against fur—the unnecessity of stripping animal skins to decorate ourselves.
Circus of Skins consists of 4 performers: the Camel, the Rabbit, the Crocodile and a Flaming Hoop that tigers usually jumped through in circus. The glamorous death of these animals together perform a circus show, in which the audience all dressed up with the remaining parts of their sacrifice.
Local Market Rebuild Project public park +water park +traditional market +shops
Facing opposition from small business owners in the original market, the renovation of Chung-Gong market, has been posponded for more than 20 years. “ We want a market ON the ground, not UNDER.� One of the strongest reasons of opposition is that, there were many failure attempts in Taipei of traditional market going underground. To preserve the original function and add a fun vide of this beloved market in my home neighborhood, I came up with the idea of a water park. A slide goes down from roof to ground, then a small river surrounds half part
of the marke bars gather. T main traditio lighting and l to unload go
et where cafes, bookstore and The other half of market reonal, adding skylights to improve larger space for shop keepers oods from trucks.
Top: illustration of the reconstruction plan Left: the original market, which was a illegal, temporary construction since 20 years ago.
Sculpture: Devil-in-the-box
UGLY BEAUTY
Top: sketch of the work Left: photos from the making process
Devil-in-the-box, a common prank that intends to scare children with a suddenly pop-up character hiding in the music box. Following the original context and adding with a twist, “Ugly Beauty� is a Devil-in-the-box toy yet inspired from the famous Japanese animation movie Spirited Away. Vivid and condensed colors of black, red, green and a spark of gold bring out the sense of luxury, while the object that pops up has a imperfect, flawed form.
MY SOLO LANTERN FESTIVAL This portrait is about me striking balances in everyday life: the curvy iron wires serve as a weighing scale, and the lantern that hung on it slides right and left in different positions.
THE BITTER-SWEET TOTEM Ring tossing game is one of the classic things to do in a taiwanese night market— people pay for a bucket of wooden rings then throw them to rows of prizes, and get what ever the rings fall on to. Meeting people in life is a bit like that: mostly random, we don’t get to choose who should be our families, and can even hardly control who to make friends with. However, we all keep learning to love the uniqueness of these people.
PAINTINGS & MIXED MEDIA Created between 2017-2019
Left: Digital Illustration, used Adobe Illustrator Bottom: Still objects, charcoal
Left: Mountain Jade, charcoal / May, 2019
Left: the generation of needle pen, Photoshop Middle: collage, oil pastel crayon Right: Watersoluble crayon
Photography Top: Jinguashi, Northeast Coast, Taiwan Right: Studio photography Nikon 5300