Seven-day week

What is Life?

– People and Home in the Paintings of Chou Cheng-Liang

Author/Chang Ching-Wen

1.

  I had written a book about the works of Chou Cheng-Liang made in 2010. In the book, I used the “little happiness in ordinary life” to describe the warm gleam in his paintings. When we talked about these works with him again, he was embarrassed to say that “though you described the happiness in my paintings, I felt of bitter.” Of course he was very kind to accept my misunderstanding. Indeed, the word “happiness” is too heavy. Maybe it is the practical sense that we can find the answer from these fantasy paintings.

  Chou Cheng-Liang has lived with his family in Sanyi for four to three years. They moved from Yonghe, where is a urban area with high population and tense lifestyle, to Sanyi, where is a rural place surrounded by natural environments. His life goes on, and so does his creating. Chou is a sensitive creator for external environments and human relationships, and his works have reflected the external and internal sides of human beings.

  Chou’s works, from sculptures and installations in his early years to paintings, are all about the lifestyle in certain environments. He used the term “stay closed to oneself” to describe his ultimate pursuing in these years.

  When he studies in Taipei National University of the Arts, he lived in Yonghe, studied in Kuandu, and rent the apartment next to the river bank. In these suburban areas of Taipei City, the common characteristics are the lack of the so-called superiority fantasy and with direct and clear lifestyles, which is called ordinary life. He further elaborated, “This is what I wanted to express. At that time, I wanted to try various painting languages and materials and I liked rough and crude texture. However, the training in the university is another request of elite. Form is an attitude or spirit, which focus on ideological creation, de-literariness, and no story involved. The advantages of this training enabled me to consider how to transform from a general topic to deep and performance language. I tried to use the painting language to describe normal objects to produce different meanings.”[1]

2.

  When Chou studied in university, he used 3D sculptures and installations to present normal scenes of life. He used paper pulp and other materials to create parts of houses, which is ordinary scene looking through opening windows in crowded cities, including roof, iron windows, and old walls. And all the buildings were connected together, which demonstrated the steel to survive. This is a microcosm of actual life in cities. He also had used the term “expanding buildings” to describe the scene in the back windows of cities, that is, buildings were overlapped each other.

  Home is his core topic of creation among these twenty years. His works might not be connected directly to family; however, those works have reflected the image of home.

  In his late stage of creation, he began to create oil paintings. He used oil paintings to present the space and air within. He works at that period were also affected by other painters, such as Edward Hopper who was good at painting cities to present quiet and speechless moments.

  When he studies in Tainan National University of the Arts, the main training course is oil paintings. Chou tried to use thick oil painting to demonstrate rooftop and human activities almost since this period. And this topic also became his primary painting topic of his works. When life goes into different stages, people have different feelings about life. Chou’s works in recent years have captured those emotions and present the exhaustion and satisfaction of people about their life.

  However, what is life?

3.

  “When you stand from a distance, you will find it exaggerating.”

  In the Rooftop series in 2008, we can find fantasy atmosphere in his paintings. Those works looked rational, such as people enjoy their little time on the rooftop, or dance or look at something quietly, but those carry a sense of unreal. In the fictional city, through the transformation of idealization, those paintings correct those imperfect details of actual life. Then, Chou has kids, and his family life changed and moved from Yonghe to Sanyi. Since then, the sweet burden of house head was also demonstrated in his works.

  “In the Rooftop series in 2009, these paintings were a series to exhibit tragic atmosphere, like a fantasy story. The background highlighted the super realistic part, such as the crane. The scenario was similar to the scenario in the Still Life by Jia Zhang-ke when the house rose like a rocket, or in the movie of Cai Ming-Liang when impossible things happened. When I just moved to Sanyi, I felt the same way. Sanyi is a different place with Yonghe. There was a real scenario in the ordinary that I don’t think I can capture.” During the period, those works could be described as solemnity, facing the future against light shines as heavy as twilight.

  Those works created in the early years had demonstrated the sense of pressure in crowded cities and the sense of close among people because of the compression of space. In the works of Rooftop, people in the playground and rooftop finally found a place to release and the possibility of life. Those fantasy works have shown the change in scenes. People’s feeling and imagination on space turned into another stage. The recent works by Chou have demonstrates opened scenes. It is difficult to find a reference in the real world. It is a sense of place come from nothing.

  The space process came from his experience of living in mountains and inspiration by the classic mountain and water paintings. From his works in the early time, the natural environment was a life symbol in dirty air where he could place his dreams in the corner of cities. Until he moved to Sanyi, the scene in his paintings became green and opened. Chou spent some time to find its way to enter those things in the works. He quoted from Vicent Van Goah, “If you want to draw a tree, you have to imagine you are the tree, so you can draw the vitality of trees.” In the new collection in 2013, we can see he more confidently drew natural scenes as to lead the eye of audience. On the other hand, those paintings quietly hold the world, implying stable power.

  The nature is the implication of appropriate home in the collection of Chou.

4.

  From the 3D works in his early time, the art form was relatively simple and neat, and viewers used partial scene to observe overall scene. Those city drawings can also apply the same meaning. The corners in those high buildings and the paths along with the playgrounds gave the figures in the paintings moments to be the main figures. However, those partial scenes presented in the recent works were enlarged and expanded before views, which implied the world desired by the painter became more opened. Although the painting topics and creation methods may change, his core image never changes. His interpretation of home has expanded from the surface image of house to a bigger world outside. For those people who didn’t show up in the past, they are presented in a close mental connection clearly. “Sunday Morning” and “Monday Morning” have showed simple happiness, and the painter doesn’t need to use language to express its internal emotions. Moreover, through the warmth expressed by human figures in “Hakka in Mountains and Rivers,” “Journey from Sunrise,” and “Voyage on the Wooden Box,” ferrymen expressed his anxiety in the back of tranquility. Because of the anticipation of stable life, we need to work hard and have a little adventure and restless to the unknown.

  This is life.

  The descriptive feature demonstrated in the recent works of Chou Cheng-Liang is related to some kind of recording. “I want to record people and life around me, including night scenes and events happened around me.” Something is happening in these quiet moments, even if it is speechless, it doesn’t mean nothing happened. Like in “Sunday Morning,” as we sit as usual, we might see a world out of our imagination.