Double Square 双方藝廊

Through the examination and organization of the exhibition, Younger Than Buddha glimpses into how these emerging artists have built their ways of self-expression and found inspiration in life. An active artist in major international art festivals, Sheryl Cheung employs sound, video and performance to study sonic feedback produced in material movement and explore material states while interpreting the world informed by accumulated relations and changes. Green Mountains, Clear Waters, Mountains of Silver and Gold reveals Cheung’s observations and interventions embodied by “Fertility, Economy, Power,” her project that was carried out in China’s Yunnan in 2018. Using her writings of organic forms developed through a series of interactions involving nature, plants, medicinal herbs, human body, Chinese medicine and society, the work investigates the culture of Yunnan’s Naxi people and the local ecological scenes to formulate responses to divergent life forms and related perceptual changes. The art practice of Chang Chen-Shen engages in video, installation, concept, performance and project-based art to discuss personal life journeys, humanity, sufferings and social fringe groups. Her latest work of 2021, Surgical Cuts and Stitches Landscape Wounds, continues her “Incarnation Project,” and treats skin as the canvas while replacing paint brushes with scalpels. Carving a series of landscapes on flesh, the work turns physical feelings into a point of departure to explore connections between spiritual freedom and perception. The experimental manipulation arouses people’s awareness to the human body and the way of viewing it while guiding the audience to re-think the relationship between humanity and suffering.

Huang Chih-Cheng is known for his gold leaf work, with which he incorporates ink and image to create collage-like fragments of memories. Using techniques of deconstruction, collage, reconstruction, he translates relations between man, nature and animals as well as the relationship between oneself and others into images to formulate his responses. In his latest gold leaf series, Umwelt, Huang references to anatomical and animal illustration atlases to fabricate a fresh new “Umwelt” by combining organs of different species—bird’s wings become auricles, and grapes grow along lobes of lungs, visualizing different species’ perceptions of the world while re-defining humanity itself. Li Yi-Fan, one of the recipients of the 2020 Kaohsiung Awards, deconstructs image narrative methods with sculpture, painting and video projection, and proposes new possibilities to image, particularly the changes occurred to traditional cinematic narrative methods introduced by new media image. Li’s work is extensively influenced by the digital era and online media. He collages a large amount of online information and imitates the storytelling of online images to explore narratives about the human brain, mental illness and the Internet. His latest art series of 2021, Rewiring, comprises video game interfaces, images, readymades and ceramics. Collaging elements like screensaver images and window interfaces from the 90s, he assembles an opaque, dense dimension that provokes viewers to reflect on the relationship between internet technology and human development.

The art practice of Ou Jing-Yun primarily revolves around two-dimensional painting. His work visualizes losses in life, cosmic views in mythology, pleasant sensory experiences and forms of violence. Through reconstructing, collaging and remaking symbols of violence, killing and desire, he traces the interrelation between sensory experiences and one’s desire. The mythological and religious symbols in his work reveal people’s longing for the intangible. With dream-like, surrealistic narratives, Ou represents one’s inner desire and awareness. Specializing in using a diverse visual language ranging from sculpture, video installation and sculptural space to create her work, Lin Chih-An uses self-exploration as a starting point and re-examines her relationship with the environment through switching roles. In three kinetic and video installations, the artist draws inspiration from her personal experience of facing hearing challenges since childhood, and replaces auditory communication with vision. She utilizes light and interactive installation to construct a space characterized by both the senses of sight and hearing through verbal and non-verbal communication processes, engaging the audience in dialogue between silence and sounds while inviting them into their mutual imagination and sensory world.

The work of Huang Li-Ying centers on the concept of “truthiness,” and traverses different fields in search of painting and painterliness. Huang studies special materials and focuses on their visual changes induced by light and the underlying principles, consistently moving between the two-dimensional plane and three-dimensional space with his work. Delineating the mystery of nature through unique forms of peculiar rocks, the artist continues his creative context of exploring oddly formed stones in this exhibition, and creates a large-scale, site-specific graphite drawing, entitled Stone 06, to construct a boundary-less, immersive visual perception. A recipient of Honorable Mention in the 2019 Taipei Art Awards, the art practice of Kung Pao-Leng concentrates on painting and spatial installation and makes use of readymades and their changeability while incorporating architectural, literary and philosophical conceptions and understanding of space. Treating paintings as objects, Kung reflects on the contrast between mass produced objects and works handcrafted by artists. In her recent work, she uses highly functional objects with distinct qualities and appearances found in hardware and household goods stores, and treats them as basic components of paintings.