A Journey with You: Thoughts about Han Hsu-Tung’s digitally-inspired carved-wood sculptures.

By Liu Huan-Hsien, founder, East Gallery, Taipei, July 2019

From an anthropological point of view, our society has changed rapidly with the arrival of digitalization. Moreover, society is becoming more creative, innovative, even revolutionary; while art meanwhile, goes hand-in-hand with technology. A visualized community will arrive in the near future. Along with a coming era of artificial intelligence, individually dispersed pixels begin to integrate, as an animated physical body and soul.

Possessing keen sensitivity and inspired by personal feelings, Han Hsu-Tung observes the process of social evolution in such changes. During the three decades of his wood carving career more than three hundred pieces of artwork have been created with a profusion of themes and configurations—work rich in historical inheritance and philosophical deliberation, realities play against fantasies, disintegration against aggregation, left vs right, humor vs sarcasm, light vs heavy, bright vs dark, and day vs night; Harn constructs a singular ‘formatted’ style that occupies the ground between virtuality and reality.

In recent years, pixelated carvings with different attributes have been introduced, as if the gathering and dispersal that parallels contemporary social evolution—especially the era of digitalization—jumps out of traditional patterns [of sculpture] to anticipate the future. With human development entering a state of virtuality interlaced with reality, the balance between spiritual life and a modern-technological life now needs a guide to the change in the essence of our daily lives. It follows that artists will create new forms of artwork to address changes in the environment.

This explains the gradual transformation of representation in Han’s wood carving, diverse themes with a clearly articulated artistic statement. “Head 1” (2011) is probably the first representation of [Harn’s interest in] artificial intelligence. “Melting” (2012) and “Alchemy,” “The Trend of Autumn” and “Head 2”, all sculpted in 2013, are now winning international press coverage (The Guardian, 2013); “Da Chin” (2015) exhibited at Art15 London;  “Facial Mask 2” (2015) and “Daylight and Moonlight” (2016) exhibited at Art Taipei 2016 receiving a warm embrace from the audience; while “Cultural Ink” a piece concerned with literary culture, has entered the possession of a New York collector. Several new pieces from 2017 on, such as “Snorkeling,” “Where is the ‘Like,’” and “Warrior of the Imperial Qin,” have become the topic of excited discussion among art lovers from the Middle East, Russia, mainland China, Europe and the U.S.—receiving a favorable reception thanks to rapid online exposure. “Chess,” “Snowing,” “Catcher” and “Farewell” (all 2018) have extended his exploration of the subject matter.

[Building on this growing interest,] “Waiting,” the latest dispersed/pixelated wood carving of 2019, was even reserved by a prominent sharp-eyed collector prior to the current exhibition; while, “Sound of the Wind” has garnered keen interest. It is clear that Han’s contemporary articulated wood carvings have risen to [the attention of] international art circles to be engaged by art world critics. Han’s artwork, created with [a watchful eye on] the progress of the era of artificial intelligence, is sure to have a promising future and offers you a [full artistic] journey.

Hsu-Tung Han: Time and Distance

Artists who complicate, transcend or decimate categories, that’s what we want, isn’t it? It is according to Roberta Smith, Art critic at The New York Times. Smith’s framework is certainly a profitable approach to looking at art critically. However, it is important to keep in mind this point: the artists that we connect with on a personal level are the artists that will open our eyes to the value of Smith’s focus on categorical gamesmanship. That personal connection is what makes the public care. And Han Hsu-Tung’s continually growing public audience really cares. No longer under the radar of the wider international market — audiences have opened in North America and the Middle East.

Till 2015 working under the nom-de-guerre Donald Harn; Han Hsu-Tsung, in his current sculpture, achieves an adept investigation of our contemporary digital culture. Educated as an anthropologist at the prestigious National Taiwan University, Han’s current work is explicit in its technological references.

The pixelated, atomized, ever dispersing forms Han uses today entered his work at the end of the ’00s. His exploration marks an explicit conceptual shift. Where Han’s practice of ‘mark making’ has always celebrated transitions between material and form, the sculptures that grow out of his pixelated invention take his work into unmistakably contemporary territory.

With his piece ‘Civil War,’ the theme of times passing is front-and-center. We are met with a hint of melancholy. A smooth plastic-expression characterizes the everyman-esque portrayal of a woman and man in uniform. The expression is unexpectedly remote.

In ‘Civil War,’ We are distanced from identifying with the man and woman depicted and drawn to meditate on time’s passing and the inevitable emotional separation from our memories; as the last generation that participated in building the post-war era passes.

In ‘Civil War,’ Harn reengages his 1994 ‘War Series.’ phantasmal but non-pixelated sculptures are skillfully updated with an astute reflection on our current faith in digital representation; here undercut by the poignancy of a vanishing connection between generations.

The distanced expression in ‘Civil War’ is atypical of the figuration that Han pulls from the joinery of his cubes. Immediacy and connection is his usual result. This is the case with Han’s most explicit statements engaging the digital media environment.

As seen in two pieces: ‘Where is the Like’ and ‘iFashion.’ explicit statements re-frame an introspective position that Han has been flirting with. Since 2010, Han’s pixelated technique has contrasted figurative representation with abstraction and delight in materiality; concentrating on drawing out evocative, and even biographical associations. ‘Where is the Like’ and ‘iFashion’ draw us back to the role of social observation that powered much of Han’s earlier work. The effect is to reframe his later introspective work, to see a sharper, more universal sculptural statement.

In contrast to the explicit statements about digital media, the impressively scaled ‘Snorkeling’ embodies a contemplative stillness and ambiguity that refreshes his earlier political work. Where Han’s earlier satirical sculpture depicting a scuba diving Chinese emissary, ‘Trip of Promoting Friendly Relationship’ 2009, was firmly in the tradition of European satirists Hogarth and Daumier; Han has left behind the irony so typical of his contemporaries for a new category of work that reflects on both public and private concerns.

Throughout the full body of Han’s work, his carved descriptions of form coalesce as recognizable subjects, and dissipate into the media from which it is borne, without discernible boundaries between abstraction and representation. Han’s ‘Catcher,’ a sculpture of a baseball player crouched and ready for the pitch opens our eyes to the flickering between those two poles.

Han’s play of the transition between raw wood and finished sculpture—between simulacra and media—is his true medium. His entire overview of work elicits a continuing meditation on meanings of history and vanishing materiality—arguably, Han’s true calling. Employing raw virtuosity with wood provides Han the uncommon ability to stride between representation and abstraction as he pushes his mastery with mercurial, shape-shifting sculpture, for greater rhetorical impact. He transcends skill with thought and refines concepts with work that speaks through our senses; work that speaks to us personally with uncommon sincerity.

1962
Born Taipei City, Taiwan

1985
BS Department of Anthropology, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

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SOLO MUSEUM EXHIBITIONS

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2010
“Transformed 2011”, National Sun Yat-Sen University Art Center, Kaohsiung

2004
“Solo exhibition”, Sanyi Wood Sculpture Museum, Sanyi, Taiwan

2004
“Donald Hard: Wood Sculpture”, National Central University Culture Center, Jongli, Taiwan

2002
“The Culture Awards of Rotary Club of Taipei West”, Hong-Gah Museum, Taipei, Taiwan

1998
“Solo exhibition”, Sanyi Wood Sculpture Museum, Sanyi, Taiwan

1996
“War Series”, Taipei County Cultural Center, Taipei County, Taiwan

WORK IN MUSEUM COLLECTIONS

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2009
“An Endearing Little Bird-A Lovely Little Girl”, Hong-Gah Museum, Taipei, Taiwan

2006
“Left Leg with No Name”, National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, Taichung, Taiwan

2002
“Impolite, My Braid, Human Body, No. 5, Imagination is a Fish with Golden Spots, The Politician’s Expressions”, Hong-Gah Museum, Taipei, Taiwan

1998
“X Heights, Escape from the Battle Field”, Sanyi Wood Sculpture Museum, Sanyi, Taiwan

1995
“Mars’ Dance”, Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts, Kaohsiung, Taiwan

1995
“Soldiers, Human Body”, Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taipei, Taiwan

 

GROUP EXHIBITIONS

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2013
“International Exchange Exhibition of Wood Sculpture”, Sanyi, Taiwan

2012
“International Exchange Exhibition of Wood Sculpture”, Sanyi, Taiwan

2011
“International Exchange Exhibition of Wood Sculpture”, Sanyi, Taiwan

2010
“Cathay United Art Center 10 Year Anniversary”, Taipei

2009
“International Exchange Exhibition of Wood Sculpture”, Sanyi, Taiwan, Spain

2008
“Shei-Pa Hundred Scene Art Exhibition”, Shei-Pa National Park, Taipei, Taiwan

2007
“Wooden FaceBook”, Sanyi Wood Sculpture Museum, Sanyi, Taiwan

2007
“Exhibition of Wooden Arts”, Center for Traditional Arts, Yilan, Taiwan

2006
“Place/Displace: Three Generations of Taiwanese Art”, National Taiwan Museum of  Fine Arts, Los Angeles, Vancouver, Taichung

2005
“National Art Exhibition of the Republic of China”, Taipei, Taiwan

2002
“Taiwan Modern Handicraft Exhibition”, National Taiwan Craft Research Institute, Australia, Japan

2002
“Modern Wood Art: Artisan with Emerging Language”, Taichung County Government, Taichung, Taiwan

1999
“National Sculpture Exhibition: Flying Over ‘99”, The Sculpture Association of Taiwan, Taipei, Taiwan

1999
“The Executive Yuan – Space Beatification Exhibition”, National Taiwan Craft Research Institute, Taipei, Taiwan

1998
“The Chinese New Year & The Year of Tiger Special Exhibition”, National Taiwan Craft Research Institute, New York, Paris

1995
“Opening Exhibition”, Sanyi Wood Sculpture Museum, Sanyi, Taiwan

1994
“Contemporary Sculpture Exhibition”, Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taipei, Taiwan

1993
“March Toward the Summit”, G-Zen 50 Art Center, Kaohsiung, Taiwan