Preface
The summer of 2000,I was invited to be a Visiting Professor of Ceramics Department of R.I.T. I had the opportunity to associate with the Professor Julia Galloway who had just started teaching at the Institute. In my conversations with her, I learned that in the third year of her graduate study, or when there were six or seven months before her thesis exhibition , she had her right arm broken in a skiing accident, and thus could not finish her work according to her plan. Having been frustrated for some time, she started picking up her paintbrush and draw on the bisque wares. Because Julia Galloway’s main influence was the European tradition. Therefore, indeed for the first time she bravely faced another important vocabulary other than the form of ware. Under the circumstances that her early practice was not satisfied in the beginning. Just because of this, she worked harder and harder. Consequently, her works in turns reached a status of maturity and appeared in a powerful style. After graduation, she continued her creation at the art village of Archi Bray Foundation for the Ceramic Arts. She then became one of the most famous functional potters of the United States in the late 1990’s.
Watching Hsu Yung-Hsu’s recent works, I was unconsciously reminded of Julia Galloway. The exuberant creativity of Yung-Hsu for the last decade and more was seldom seen in the professional creation in Taiwan. Apart from the obvious breakthrough technically, his style of intending to shift to a criticism of human nature and the existing social civilization mainly in the subjective abstractizing process of character had been sustaining for nearly ten years’ time.
Entering the TainanNationalUniversity of the Arts in 2003 was a fulfillment of his promise and decision of returning to school again. Starting everything from zero, he faced the pure origin of his pursuit for artist, “Maker and the Object.” As the existing social criticism no longer exists, only the dialog between the artist and his or her work is left, just like the eclosion of Julia Galloway after her arm was broken. I saw the process of Yung-Hsu’s focusing. Although abstract expression is still the form of his presentation, the energy hidden beyond image has been purified.
His works turned from sumptuousness and wilderness to silence and self-examination, just like bringing the audience to a world of personal meditation constructed by him. Even though everybody holds the freedom to read and interpret Yung-Hsu’s works, they can never escape the shocking frequency emitted from his works.
The development of contemporary art is not merely transmitting the means and ways of concepts. The role playing of the material has long been repositioned. The creation by singl material has long been consigned to limbo, and regarded as outdated and old-fashioned stubbornness. In the creator’s opinion, to challenge self, to challenge tradition and to challenge modernity is just constructing the evolution of the history of art. Yung-Hsu’s artistic creation and his challenge of his self should be more valuable in the diversified and confused modern art of Taiwan. This is because in the excessive voices for the pursuit of form and multi-media, it is very rare to see the creation of ceramic works like those done by the painters of “Painting-Defending Association” in the late 1990’s. This is also because the artist still has his sincerity, or stubbornness, towards the possibilities of single media. But such a weak voice is absolutely the most important power for the modern art of Taiwan to possibly carry out diversified development and respect possibilities.
The experimental quality of Yung-Hsu’s creative works during this period is even stronger. His experimental motive of this time is to seek for the best moment for the dialog between self and modernity. In the meantime, it is another way of establishing self-recognition. I am looking forward to seeing much more rebellious, stronger subversive and more absolute reforms in the works of Hsu Yung-Hsu.
Ching-Yuan, Chang
Professor of Ceramics
Graduate Institute of Applied Arts
TainanNationalUniversity of the Arts