Eight Days A Week-Yao Jui-chung Solo Exhibition

DURATION: 2017-02-18 ~ 2017-03-26
OPENING: 2017-02-18 00:16-AM
VENUE: Tina Keng Gallery
ADDRESS: 1F, No.15, Ln. 548, Ruiguang Rd, Neihu Sist., Taipei 114, Taiwan
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Eight Days a Week Yao Jui-chung Good times fly by. Because I had squandered my childhood, I did not want to miss my children’s innocent years. Ever since my elder daughter En En was born in 2009 — the year I turned 40 — my lonely world that had once been occupied by my complex with ruins and historical destiny was completely upended. This came as an utter surprise to everyone around me, including myself. Like most fathers, I watch all the cartoons with my daughter. Weekends are spent either at the park, the playground, baby store, or toy store. My baby daughter Zhen Zhen came along three years later. The two of them doodle every corner in the apartment, from the walls to the furniture; no room is spared. Strewn across the floor are all sorts of toys. My daughters’ infatuation began with the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, Thomas & Friends, Peppa Pig, SpongeBob SquarePants, and PAW Patrol, and then moved onto Frozen, Chibi Maruko Chan, Crayon Shin-Chan, Dora and Friends, and most recently Detective Conan. From time to time I would ask my daughters, “Who’s the handsomest man in the world?” The standard answer used to be “Daddy,” but now — to my utter surprise — it’s “Shinichi Kudo,” aka Detective Conan. Like a bolt from the blue, Daddy’s little girls have fallen for someone else. Disney and the Japanese anime industry have lured my kids away. I cannot help but feel melancholy at the thought of my daughters being in company of such globalized cartoons. Of course as a father, my biggest hope is for my girls to have a happy childhood, and that’s why I let them do whatever they want at home. However, as my wife follows them around, picking up everything and anything they leave behind all day, her voice grows louder, her temper worse. The “Baby” series came into being under this endearing yet dreadful circumstance. A tangible sense of distance is growing between an outdoorsman like me and my baby girls, who love watching TV at home. Cartoon characters have become lingering shadows in everyday life. They are my daughters’ doodles on the walls; they are the stickers that they randomly paste around the apartment; they appear even in my notebooks where my daughters take the liberty to express their own creativity. More often than not I am left speechless. So I turn these daily experiences into the subject matter of my painting, where against the backdrop of idyllic landscape, the concurrence of my babies’ formative years and my andropause becomes an important chapter in our life. Rather than a picture of family life, this body of work is more like the fantasia of a reclusive father, comprising one illusory image after another that may happen in the real world. Perhaps this could count as some sort of art therapy for me. As for Eight Days a Week, it is inspired by my life for the past eight years as a middle-aged guy who`s been taking care of his daughters while making art at home, therefore losing touch with the friends with whom he used to hang out. I actually don’t enjoy the fact that I have become a homebody since I got married and since my kids were born, but can’t really change anything due to family ethics. The only thing I can do is to paint the wistful memories of me and my art and literary friends. This long scroll documents the roster of these friends who kept me company before I got married: from the comrades with whom I co-wrote and co-edited the book Taipei 100, to the anarchists with whom I roamed the ruins, from the risk-taking artists who wrestled with me on the mahjong table during our “New Year’s Day Cup,” to the middle-aged guys who were obsessed with hot springs. To have had the pleasure to consort with these oddities for decades, and to have continued my practice on this arduous and unforeseeable path, I feel immensely grateful. For more than 20 years without an office job I have survived. This toilsome experience tells me that there is no such thing as a "five-day work week" in the life of eccentrics. For many artists, the Muse doesn`t appear when you clock in and out on time on a steadfast work discipline. Sometimes inspiration strikes when one`s in the shower, or when one`s in a trance or daze, or when one`s meandering, indulging in flights of fancy, or when one`s chattering and schmoozing, or even when one`s head over heels in love — that tremendous energy fuels a creative mind the way uranium fuels a nuclear power plant. As for art making, one doesn`t simply "get it" by reading some poorly translated Western art theory books, or by seeing exhibitions and listening to some abstruse concepts. Indeed it is important to work hard, but if you don`t have it in you to make it as an artist, life would be a lot easier if you`d just let it be. All in all, the vicissitudes of life can`t catch up with a well-thought-out plan. Thorough life planning can`t outweigh one phone call. All that chitchat doesn’t compare to a lover`s entrancing prattle. As the world knows no boundaries, and life is short, through a long, dark night only the true heart shines.