Hsieh, Hao - Chun Portfolio
Contect
Intro
s1007130@gmail.com
Education 2012-2015 Tunghai University Bacheior of Major in Fine Art
Exhibition Dec 2012 Mar 2014 Sept 2014 Feb 2015 July 2015
Department Exhibition- Newcomer Award Desirous Ani mal Joint Exhibition CMP Summer Art Festival Joint Exhibition Interest Watching Joint Exhibition Lazy Habit Joint Exhibition
oduction Hsieh Hao-Chun
00 contents
01 Illustration 02 Mutation - Graffiti - Other
03 Graduate Project - The Beginning of My Graduation Project and the Core Idea - The Shortcut Art - How? - The Exhibition - The Truth - The Name of the Series of the Works: Daily Labor
01
illustration
The interested about illustrator came from my fascinated in tattoo art and graffiti art in high school, and the habit continue to university, becoming mature and developed my 8 into own style.
And it is always easier to have fun and show some humor with illistrator.
And show irony too.
Sperm
Date - 2015/07/05 Size - 10Ă—20cm Material - pencil
9
This is not a fish with helmet who feel lonely, this is a sperm who been stop by condom
10
I am not sure since when, I became a persoon who is became a tool for me when I was in need of an new i
Door Eagle
Date - 2013/12/5 Size - 17Ă—23 cm Material - sketch paper, marker
He will keep waiting. Wait till some accident happen to the manager.
s easier to think with image, so illustrator also idea or want to figure out something.
11
13
Under the Sea
Date - 2015/08/21 Size - 20Ă—10 cm Material - sketch paper, marker
14
Businessman
Date - 2015/02/18 Size - 21Ă—29 cm Material - sketch paper, marker
15
Girlfriend
Date - 2015/05/16 Size - 21Ă—29 cm Material - sketch paper, marker
17
Air Johnson
Date - 2013/04/16 Size - 21Ă—29 cm Material - sketch paper, marker
18
Dr. Roach
Date - 2014/12/26 Size - 21Ă—15 cm Material - sketch paper, marker
Red Butt
Date - 2013/12/05 Size - 21Ă—15cm Material - sketch paper, marker
19
Fiship
Date - 2015/11/11 Size - 29Ă—21 cm Material - sketch paper, marker
20
Shardy Guard
Date - 2014/02/03 Size - 21Ă—29 cm Material - sketch paper, marker
21
23 Extension
Date - 2013/12/05 Size - 21Ă—15 cm Material - sketch paper, marker
24
Fascina
ted
25
by Bana
na
27
Big crush on banana by unknow reason
Banana Head
Date - 2013/07/07 Size - 17Ă—13 cm Material - sketch paper, marker
28
Banana Farmer
Date - 2013/07/08 Size - 17Ă—15 cm Material - sketch paper, marker
29
Oxcart
Date - 2013/06/06 Size - 17Ă—15 cm Material - sketch paper, marker
31
A great civilization build by banana. With knowlege and courage They rule Universe ultimately
Armstronana
Date - 2013/03/03 Size - 58Ă—40 cm Material - sketch paper, marker
32
Beheld The mighty God of banana.
33
Budhhanana
Date - 2013/05/20 Size - 113Ă—82 cm Material - sketch paper, marker
34
02
MUTATION
In this period, I felt that marker paint became a litt am not used to, meanwhile using the material I fam
tle bit boring, so I started to use some material that I miliar with but in a different way.
Graffiti
40
41
Tall Guy
Date - 2014/01/21 Size - 60Ă—195cm Material - cement pillar, charcoal stick
Other
46
47
Starfish / Stingray / Wave Lantern fish / Seahorse / Lamprey Conch / Jellyfish / Coral
Sea Food Squad
Date - 2013/05/20 Size - 33Ă—24 cm (nine pieces) Material - board, gesso, marker
48
Horse?
Date - 2014/10/18 Size - 50Ă—70 cm Material - board, marker
49
51
Octopus
Date - 2014/11/20 Size - 17Ă—13 cm Material - Ink and color on paper
52
Drumer
Date - 2013/06/08 Size - 30Ă—35 cm Material - Ink and color on paper
53
54
Sphere
Date - 2014/06/19 Size - 17Ă—13 cm Material - Ink and color on paper
55
56
This is a Waterfall
Date - 2014/03/07 Size - 180Ă—90 cm Material - Ink and color on paper , ice
57
This is a Waterfall
Date - 2014/03/07 Size - 180Ă—90 cm Material - Ink and color on paper , ice
58
Ink and color on paper Date - 2014/03/07 Size - 40Ă—40 cm Material - coal, white glues
59
60
03
61
Graduate Project
Daily Lobor
The Beginning of My Graduation Project and the Cor
The series of my final graduation project started from a simple question: Why do I need to do this? Each art major is required to do a final graduation project in the fourth year in order to graduate. Therefore, most students wil l have to spend every minute working on the project, except the time for eating and sleeping. However, I was wondering if it is really necessary to do this so call “final graduation project� in order to affirm my professional skills and to show everyone that I am competent enough to graduate from the university. When I saw all my schoolmates work so hard in the studio, sudden bursts of frustration and sadness popped up. I came to realize that people would never know how much effort an artist had made to produce such work since the viewers usually judge a piece directly only by what have been shown to them; we often focus too much on the work itself and are unable to reach the story behind the work.
re Idea
All of a sudden, a malicious idea struck me: since the story behind the artwork will seldom be discovered, why not play a “trick� with the visitors in my final project and satirize the shallowness of art that we only reach the surface of an art work instead of further exploring the meaning behind?
65
The Shortcut Art
Diligent and hard-working seem to be the stereotypical descriptions of a so-called “good” artist. Nevertheless, since people cannot see behind the curtain, why not take a shortcut? From here a new form of art derived, and I term this form of art “Shortcut Art”.
67 Shortcut art must be done in a quicker and easier way, and the techniques the artist uses, or the “shortcut” the artist takes, cannot be seen through; however, the artwork presented to the viewers must be identified as hard-working and timeconsuming as well as delicate and attractive. The core spirit of shortcut art is that the truth must not be found out by the viewers so that the artist can still present himself or herself as a stereotypical “good” artist.
How?
Inspired by and obsessed with the technique of automatism in my junior year, I decided to make the graduation project an experiment. In the experiment (for the project), I developed a technique that would enable me to make art pieces automatically by using ice, Chinese ink, and fabric. To make perfect pieces, I had conducted 413 experiments, trying to test the effect presented by different fabric with different percentage of Chinese ink and water. The procedure of the experiments went as follows. First, I soaked the fabric strip in the liquid mixed by water and Chinese ink, crumpled it into the shape of a ball and put it into a freezer.
69
While making the fabric ball, I would leave a small part out so that I could clip the ball on a foldable rack as I took out the frozen fabric ball. Under the rack was a pile of paper, and the distance between the rack and the paper had been already calculated so that the fabric strip would reach the paper as it melted and thus unfolded. During the melting process, the waterdrops would fall down and gradually wet the paper. The droplets of Chinese ink would bleed and disperse out on the paper only when the fabric was completely unfolded and reached the wet paper since the ink was easily left on the fabric.The whole procedure was done when the fabric and the paper ran dry.
Each time, with different fabric and amounts of the Chinese ink and of water, the images shown on the were different and unpredictable. With this method, I was able to produce a huge number of pieces within six months, the time I was given to finish my graduation project. During the process, I was like a farmer who worked hard sowing in the morning and reaping at night. Day by day, I had accumulated 413 pieces in total eventually.
Fabric
Soak
Bucket Mix by
Ink
Water
71
Freezer
Shining Black Fabric Ice Ball
3hr
Play computer games
7hr
Party
73
11hr
Hang out
15hr
Sleep
The Exhibition
On the exhibition site, I was given several small rooms to display my works, so I decided to re-present the production process to the visitors. First, the viewers would see a huge piece of fabric hung from the ceiling. The fabric had been soaked in the mixture of the Chinese ink and water, so it looked black, and the piece of fabric was long enough to reach the pile of paper. Still, the fabric and the paper were already dry, so the visitors could not observe the process of the water dropping down and the ink dispersing out, but they would see the images shown on the paper. Without any knowledge of my works, the viewers might be confused and just considered it some sort of installation art.
75
Later, the viewers were directed to another room, and rig wooden boards on the wall. Since each piece was mounted, the much time and energy painting the pieces with traditional Chi seeing all the 413 fabric balls exhibited on the shelf with each process video would the viewers come to realize that all the pie painted with Chinese brush and ink.
ght in front of them were displayed 11 pieces mounted on e viewers would easily assume that the artist must have spent inese ink painting skills. Only when entering the last room, labeled the date and number, and watching the production eces were created in a sort of automatic way instead of being
77
78
As I mentioned in the beginning, people seldom question the true story behind an artwork, which is exactly what I want to question about. To create a sense of being deceived, I made the viewers confused first, later appreciate the great deal of time and energy I spent on each piece and my skills, and at last amazed at the true technique I adopted to create the series of works. I further elaborated the concept of the works to the viewers that in the production process, I positioned myself more like an art entrepreneur rather than an artist. I referred to all the fabric balls as my “workers.” As the frozen fabric balls melted and unfolded, the water and the Chinese ink ran out freely on the wet paper, and my works were done; that is, each piece of work was produced “automatically.” I was glad that most visitors had positive feedback for my works, yet in the meantime I secretly glowed with pride that the revelation of the technique was just a piece of the puzzle, and no one got to see the big picture.
The Truth
One of the Taiwanese performance artists Tehching Hsieh1 is famous for his series of five “One Year Performances.” In his second One Year Performance, the Time Clock Piece, the artist punched a time clock every hour on the hour for one year. However, have you ever questioned that the one who punched the time clock might not be the artist himself ? Maybe he hired a makeup artist and an actor to help him finish this project, and he actually spent a year in Hawaii for a vacation. Think of Banksy2, a godlike British graffiti artist, as another example. Bansky’s real identity is a mystery. How can you be sure if Bansky is a real person or a “virtual idol” created by a team of artists? The same, in my exhibition, I presented 413 fabric balls with each labeled the date and the number to the visitors as the evidence that I did conduct 413 experiments. Nevertheless, how can you be sure that I did conduct 413 experiments?
81
Note.1 One Year Performance 1980–1981 (Time Clock Piece) 1980-1981 Performance art Tehching (Sam) Hsieh ( 謝德慶 ; born 31 December 1950; Nanjhou, Pingtung County, Taiwan) is a former performance artist. He has been called a “master” by fellow performance artist Marina Abramović. http://tehchinghsieh.com/ Note.2 Flower Bomber Unknown Graffiti Banksy An English-based graffiti artist, political activist and film director whose real identity is unknown http://banksy.co.uk/menu.asp
On my final evaluation day, I “confessed� to everyone that everyth of accomplishing a project within such limited time just in order to m of the project could verify my competence and professional skills; thus work so hard on the project? If I did perform 413 experiments within three times a day, and each time took three to five hours, which comple experiments for twenty times within six months, meaning I produced
hing was a lie. As I stated in the beginning, I could not see the value meet the graduation requirement, and I did not think the completion s, I decided to take shortcuts. With this premise, how would I literally n 6 months, it means that I needed to carry out experiments at least etely violates the spirit of shortcut art. The truth is that I only made 20 pieces only.
83
To provide solid evidence and make people convinced that I have worked so hard on the series of works, I needed to present the experimental records—the fabric balls; however, all 413 fabric balls were just fabric balls—they were never really used in the experiments, and it only took me five days to produce them all. Here is how I made them. I did soak the fabric strips in the liquid mixed by water and Chinese ink, crumple it into the shape of a ball, and put it into a freezer. On the next day, I took all the frozen fabric balls out, let them melt, left them dry, and the final step was to give each fabric ball a fake date and number. I could produce 80 fabric balls a day, and all 413 fabric balls were done in five days. Simple and easy. To sum up, it only took me 20 days or so to complete my graduation project. The exhibition was actually built on a lie, and as I expected, no one ever questioned, suspected, or was even curious about the reality. So far, you, as readers of this paper or the visitors who have come to the exhibition in person, have learned all the tricks I played. In the production process, I did my best to slack off, and the idea of “shortcut” functions as a critical element to reach the effect of ridicule.
The term, “shortcut,” can be conceptualized from two layers. From the surface, shortcut art is an automaticallyproducing technique I devised and experimented for creating artworks, while the term also refers to the whole production process—how I took advantage of only a small amount of time to maximize the value of each piece and got my graduation project done.
85
Although the idea of shortcut plays an important role in the project, the shortcuts the artist takes cannot be seen through easily by the viewers, which, as I claimed previously, is the core spirit of shortcut art. Therefore, how to cultivate an atmosphere of sudden realization after seeing the exhibition becomes a tough issue for me to think. In the exhibition, I designed three phases to reveal the truth of my artworks step by step. First, I presented myself as a diligent artist, who have worked very hard and spent a great deal of time on my work. Second, the techniques I used to produce this series of works, a form of automization, were displayed to the viewers at the exhibition site so that people would realize that I actually “took shortcuts” to complete the works. The truth, or the reality, was exposed in the final phase—to mock the shallowness of art, to satirize the fact that people usually interpret things from the surface and seldom further explore the real story behind.
87
The Name of the Series of the Works: Daily Labor
89
Realizing the true story behind the series of the works, the name of this project, Daily Labor, seems to be particularly ironic. Like I said, people tend to judge a piece merely from its surface. For me, art is distrustful. Artists over the past few centuries have created a sort of authoritative image of themselves, and people seldom have any doubt about the artworks they see. Likewise, in the exhibition, viewers believed me and regarded what I presented to them as true, even though everything was fake. In my project, I, the artist, need to be considered a part of the artwork since my behavior—deceiving the viewers first and revealing the truth later—is also a key element that constitutes or completes this serious of works. If the role I play in the project is ignored or overseen, Daily Labor will be another serious of normal pieces of painting. Through this project, I want to provoke viewers to reconsider the meaning and the purpose of creation, simultaneously satire how shallow art is that the truth behind is seldom questioned.
90
91
93
Daily Labor Date 2014/11/14 Size 75x75 cm Ink and color on paper
94
Daily Labor Date 2014/10/08 Size 75x75 cm Ink and color on paper
96
97
Daily Labor Date 2014/10/21 Size 75x75 cm Ink and color on paper
98
99
Daily Labor Date 2015/03/03 Size 75x75 cm Ink and color on paper
101
Daily Labor Date 2014/10/29 Size 75x75 cm Ink and color on paper
Daily Labor Date 2015/01/05 Size 75x75 cm Ink and color on paper
102
Daily Labor Date 2014/12/27 Size 75x75 cm Ink and color on paper
103
104
105