Lot 137
Pork Belly Series - Flesh Weapons - Junk
Chang-Ling (Taiwanese, 1975)
2006
Oil on canvas
162.5 x 129.5 cm
Estimate
TWD 220,000-280,000
HKD 52,000-66,000
USD 6,700-8,600
Sold Price
TWD 480,000
HKD 115,663
USD 14,925
Signature
+ OVERVIEW
The "Pork Belly" Series extends from flesh weapons to the war of the flesh. The artist reaches back to his childhood memories and explores his reaction to setbacks. By presenting the sweet and pure desire for war games in childhood, the artist examines and questions the cultural conflicts confronted by overseas students in adulthood. Set against a multi-hierarchical background of different shades, these flesh weapons of toy guns, aircrafts, tanks, and submarines create an abnormally blood-red world piled up with flesh and bodies. The soft flesh that symbolizes desire and lust becomes bloody man-slaughtering tools in war; and Western toys in the memory are no longer toys but become homicidal weapons. This construction of mutilated flesh suggests the artist's consciousness of and resistance against Western cultural colonialism and depicts, from his own origin of consciousness, the complexity of cultural recognition by the majority of Taiwanese in this era. As if on a pitch-black battlefield, the artist fights a desperate war against invisible alien cultures and pursues the cultural subject. However, this helpless and adventurous exploration in the shade makes one feel the trickle of fear.
(Quoted from The World in the Flesh, by Hu Chao-sheng)
Modern & Contemporary Asian Art
Ravenel Autumn Auction 2009 Taipei
Sunday, December 6, 2009, 12:00am