Lot  137 Ravenel Autumn Auction 2009 Taipei

Ravenel Autumn Auction 2009 Taipei

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

Titled on the reverse Pork Belly Series - Flesh Weapons - Junk in Chinese, Chang-Ling in Chinese and dated 2006

+ 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)

Related Info

Modern & Contemporary Asian Art

Ravenel Autumn Auction 2009 Taipei

Sunday, December 6, 2009, 12:00am