Double Square 双方藝廊

Double Square Gallery is delighted to present Performers on the field—Kuo Yen-Fu Solo Exhibition from December 16 to February 17, 2023. Marking the artist’s third collaboration with Double Square Gallery after the group exhibition Depiction – Between representation and the real (2022) and Art Taipei 2023, this exhibition features more than thirty two-dimensional paintings and sketch drawings, and serves as a conclusion to and presentation of the artist’s work in the past three years. Kuo Yen-Fu’s work draws inspiration from personal experience and childhood memory, which he innately transforms into splendidly vibrant mixture and layers of colors that inform his painting style – one that converges image, body, speed, fluidity and linear expression. Underneath the image of the subject’s body and posture lies the artist’s delineation and exploration of the collective memory of an era as well as the diverse social realities that reflect glimpses of humanity in different situations of life. In Performers on the field, the artist taps into his own experience of being an athlete for years to unveil the real lives of athletes uncaptured by the limelight, and prompts the spectator to reflect on the meaning of sport in relation to society, its influence, and related topics, while responding to a range of life circumstances and situations in contemporary society through metaphors of the body and speed.

The exhibition theme “performers on the field” employs the artist’s previous athletic experience as the foundation, and ingeniously extracts elements from sports competitions, including scenes of fleeting moments, postures of players, objects in random corners, which are vividly depicted on canvas to portray the historical sports events and relevant issues. Under the limelight and surrounded by praises, athletes often appear to be winners in life as well. As they fight for champions, they also demonstrate differently robust yet equally explosive images that are both performative and worshipped. Such moments are usually the most dramatic, and to the artist, a rich source of creativity through which he reflects on himself and finds his material. Sports competitions are like countless rehearsals of performances. Those involved must push themselves to the extreme for breakthrough and victory within a limited period of time. Despite all the efforts, no one can ever predict the end with absolute certainty. When the final moment comes, there can only be one winner in every competition. The endless training of athletes behind the scenes, though incredibly challenging and lonely, constitutes a touching and memorable journey. Focalizing on physical postures and forms of athletes, the artist interprets their unknown lives with the complex and genuine emotions and feelings in life.

Through his intense visual expression of bursting colors, the artist delineates the journey of athletes’ inner emotional roller coaster through a lyrical, poetic perspective that is both intuitive and metaphoric, strong yet gentle, active but placid, and at the same time, cool-minded and sensibility infused. In his work, the artist sometimes depicts the composed steadiness of the subjects’ bodies, and at other times, their masculinity and fierceness that bursts with energy or their abysmal regrets, unveiling various physical performances and enabling the spectators to enter lifeworld created by the artist through the bodily expression of athletes, and vice versa. Kuo uses a warm palette and a compositional expression in a theatrical and documentary style, not only portraying the pure inner world of athletes beneath their vivid images, but also interpreting the collective memories of the 80s and 90s when technology and image were not as popular as they are today.

In contemporary society in the current globalized, post-pandemic context, playing sports has become a mainstream leisure activities for many people, who seek a sense of breakthrough and achievement outside work through improving health, bettering physique, and developing hobbies. Such a trend also highlights a conceptual shift regarding sport in relation to national competitiveness, the working and expansion of the capitalist market, street subcultures, and fashion trends, presenting an opportunity for sport to be developed into a finer culture and capitalist operation. Despite so, sport has allowed this generation to share an elevated self-awareness and the ups and downs in individual lives, which are indeed memorable scenes in competitions, and everyone on this stage of competition is truly “a performer on the field.”