2017 Mountain Roam, Liang Project Co Space / Shanghai, China
Since ancient times, literati and sages have flocked to the spiritual imagery of using "mountain" as a repository for their contemplative thoughts. However, artist Shiau Jon-Jen's works, expressed through materials such as wood and stone, reveal a distinct atmosphere. Although "mountain" naturally carries the poetic connotations of classical literature as his creative theme, it extends beyond that. His creative impulses are deeply connected to the rhythms of nature, celebrating the sensual textures of these materials through his labor. The meanings of his works intertwine the forces of the human body and surrounding natural elements, presenting a tenacious aesthetic imagery.
Shiau Jon-Jen's sculptures exhibit simplicity and intentionally highlight the sensory qualities of the wood itself. The straightforward cuts and the rough texture of the wood in his carvings showcase a certain naivety and persistence, reminiscent of the visual characteristics of African tribal sculptures. The unintentional chisel marks and natural grain of the wood sometimes collaborate and sometimes obstruct each other, creating a rhythmically charged melody; the large-scale excavations give the works a rejuvenated presence as they interact with space.
At first glance, Shiau Jon-Jen's wood sculptures seem easily confounded with the geometric elements of Western modernism. Yet, this familiar trait reveals the artist's painstaking intentions. The repeated appearance of geometric forms in his works precisely embodies Shiau's perception of nature. "Mountains" are invariably continuous. Although their appearances differ, Shiau condenses the undulating mountain ranges within the boundaries of a single piece of wood. The wood, carrying the breath of the mountains, acts as their spokesperson, using its limited but life-filled body to tell the endless story of the mountains. All things in nature are interdependent, mutually dissolving and balancing each other. The extensive hollows and carvings in the artist's works vividly bring out this mysterious characteristic of nature. The structures in his sculptures do not reflect a refinement of formal language, but resonate with the rhythm of all things through his bodily actions. The finite form of a single piece does not imply the cessation of life's variability; the layering and repetition of form elements foreshadow the ceaseless and infinitely rich movement of life's sensibilities.
Unlike most Western artists, the wood in Shiau Jon-Jen's works does not participate as mere material but fully manifests as a representation of the entire world in his artistic contention. In the process of creation, actions such as piercing, chiseling, carving, and sawing, along with the traces left behind, allow one to feel the warmth and flavor of the wood, and indeed the world, tightly interwoven with our emotions, meanings, and values, underpinning our perception of existence. The artist's bodily actions reveal the world's body, echoing Maurice Merleau-Ponty's notion that the "thingness" of things is the origin and mystery of the world's existence.
Shiau Jon-Jen's tireless sculpting makes his works a situation of mutual emergence and blossoming between the artist and nature, becoming a field where the human body and the body's objects intersect and resonate. The so-called "strolling in the mountains" does not allude to a romantically tinged reclusive retreat but hopes to exhibit the evidence of an entanglement of internal response and external forces as highlighted in Shiau's wood sculptures. This illustrates a certain breath of existence, depicting how our bodies are occupied and possessed by the existence of the world. Shiau Jon-Jen's unhurried creation is an elegant walk in the "mountains" of nature, encountering the sensuality of nature in humble anticipation and making it shine gloriously.