HONGJOHN LIN
In Hongiohn Lin's surreal works, fabrication and reality are deliberately confounded in order to expresses skepticism concerning the cultural mechanisms that lie behind the presentation of reality. In Musing and Amusing: Constructivism in Taiwan (2000), for example, he created an imaginary person whose life story was interwoven with authentic history - a Taiwanese artist born at the end of the 19th century who took part in the Constructivist movement in Moscow during the October Revolution. Deconstructing the model by which museums arrange and manipulate their collections, Hongjohn constructed a narrative space with imaginary images and artworks that questioned the veracity of art history.
Hongjohn's approach to the issues of history and reality is often playful and ironic. For example, in How to Shrink Nature and Magnify Oneself (2001), he placed a golf flag on top of a mountain of cement fragments. To one side he hung a traditional Chinese landscape painting on which unrelated lines of poetry were written in both Chinese and English. To the other he showed video footage of himself swinging from a wire in historical costume, as if performing a flying stunt in a martial arts film. Commingling the modern and the traditional as well as Chinese and Western cultural symbols the installation made humorous reference to several features of Taiwan's current state of affairs
Rather than disrupting reality with falsehoods, Uncle Chen (2002) was based on a real event: the famous "God's Salvation Church" incident of 1998, in which a group of fervid UFO cult members, convinced that God was about to visit earth in a flying saucer to save humanity, gave up their possessions and followed their "spiritual leaders to the United States. This leader was Chen Heng-ming, who happened to be a relative of the artist. Hongjohn collected a variety of different visual materials, including CNN news footage, interviews and clips from science fiction films, edited the footage and projected it on screens. He also provided visitors with documents concerning the people involved in the event, thus producing a "true yet bizarre spectacle about the meeting of reality and fantasy.-A.C.
http://www.artouch.com/story.asp?id=2004041258643048
http://www.artouch.com/story.asp?id=2004090862120688
http://www.ylib.com/class/topic3/show1.asp?No=371408Object=movie
http://www.appledaily.com.tw/template/twapple_sub/art_main.cfm?loc=TP&showdate=20030805&sec_id=17&art_id=243324
Born 1964, Taichung, Taiwan
Lives and works in Taipei, Taiwan
My Uncle Chen: I Am a Nephew of God, 2002
Video installation
Courtesy the artist
Video installation
Courtesy the artist
In Hongiohn Lin's surreal works, fabrication and reality are deliberately confounded in order to expresses skepticism concerning the cultural mechanisms that lie behind the presentation of reality. In Musing and Amusing: Constructivism in Taiwan (2000), for example, he created an imaginary person whose life story was interwoven with authentic history - a Taiwanese artist born at the end of the 19th century who took part in the Constructivist movement in Moscow during the October Revolution. Deconstructing the model by which museums arrange and manipulate their collections, Hongjohn constructed a narrative space with imaginary images and artworks that questioned the veracity of art history.
Hongjohn's approach to the issues of history and reality is often playful and ironic. For example, in How to Shrink Nature and Magnify Oneself (2001), he placed a golf flag on top of a mountain of cement fragments. To one side he hung a traditional Chinese landscape painting on which unrelated lines of poetry were written in both Chinese and English. To the other he showed video footage of himself swinging from a wire in historical costume, as if performing a flying stunt in a martial arts film. Commingling the modern and the traditional as well as Chinese and Western cultural symbols the installation made humorous reference to several features of Taiwan's current state of affairs
Rather than disrupting reality with falsehoods, Uncle Chen (2002) was based on a real event: the famous "God's Salvation Church" incident of 1998, in which a group of fervid UFO cult members, convinced that God was about to visit earth in a flying saucer to save humanity, gave up their possessions and followed their "spiritual leaders to the United States. This leader was Chen Heng-ming, who happened to be a relative of the artist. Hongjohn collected a variety of different visual materials, including CNN news footage, interviews and clips from science fiction films, edited the footage and projected it on screens. He also provided visitors with documents concerning the people involved in the event, thus producing a "true yet bizarre spectacle about the meeting of reality and fantasy.-A.C.
http://www.artouch.com/story.asp?id=2004041258643048
http://www.artouch.com/story.asp?id=2004090862120688
http://www.ylib.com/class/topic3/show1.asp?No=371408Object=movie
http://www.appledaily.com.tw/template/twapple_sub/art_main.cfm?loc=TP&showdate=20030805&sec_id=17&art_id=243324