* 1983 in Taipei, Taiwan. Lives and works in Taipei
Taiwanese artist
Niu Jun Qiang is interested in the interface(s) between the physical and the psyche, between materiality and spirituality. His artistic practice is an attempt to create works and situations in which immaterial phenomena - e.g. empathy, religious experiences - can be experienced physically.
Exhibited works
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NIU Jun Qiang Solo Exhibition 2018, 2018. 2nd | A | Video and audio, installation, light. NIU Jun Qiang Solo Exhibition 2018 is divided into two parts: In the first room, a video is played showing the artist guiding a blind friend through an empty exhibition space, describing to him in detail which works he will supposedly show here, but in reality has never exhibited. These works are about the question of what God is, how we imagine his appearance and what feelings we associate with his presence. Nothing is shown in the second exhibition space: this room remains completely empty. The final scene of the video shows the empty (second) exhibition space and thus blurs the boundary between the virtual space in the video and the physical space in reality. The exhibition space is thus no longer (merely) the place where the work is exhibited, but is transformed into the artwork itself. By constructing an exhibition that never took place and that could only be imagined through descriptions, while in reality the visitors were in an empty exhibition space, the artist wanted to create an "afterimage"-experience that allowed them to immerse themselves in the non-physical dimension. Walking through the empty exhibition spaces thus becomes a kind of religious ritual that transforms the physical experience of being blind into a higher vision. | |
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Longevity, 2013 2nd | A | Three channels video installation, handwriting. The video shows the three white parts of the artist's body: fingernail, the white of the eye and tooth, all filmed in makro cinematography. The extreme close ups gave the impression as if there is nothing to be seen on screen. But the screen was anyways installed in a way that the audience couldn’t see the content of the video. Here, video as a medium of seeing reaches its limits, as what is depicted becomes practically invisible. On the other hand, this does not mean the death of the medium video, it remains (artistically) significant, but in a different form – it is used in this installation as the only source of light that makes visible what would otherwise remain hidden, namely some hidden words that artist has written on the floor. The artist alludes to this tension between reduction and indestructibility comparison with the title "Longevity", and makes us ask: What is eternity? | |
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Reveal, 2020 2nd | A | Three-channel video, installation, 4-channel stereo mix. The video installation invites the viewer to dive into the unconscious. A soft female voice puts us in a hypnotic state and takes us on a journey to Italy. After a while, the screen changes from an empty black surface to a dim area of light that flickers like a flame with the voice of the hypnotist. "Reveal" discusses the correspondence between the images of internal consciousness and external images. Such correspondence is derived from religious experiences and exploration of collective subconsciousness. The work departs from Andrei Tarkovsky’s film Nostalghia (1983), inviting a hypnotist to narrate this work to the candle fire. Amidst the flickering light of the candle fire, what gaps will emerge between the images in the viewers’ minds and original images in the film? | |
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Self Portrait, 2016. 2nd | A
| Photographs and leather, installation. The two photographs introduce the artist as a blind man, painting white in an all-white space. He doesn‘t know that he is in a white space, nor does he know the color of the paint on his hands, he just keeps repeating the action of covering. This is how Niu Jun Qiang sees his situation as a visual artist within the contemporary art world. When the artist was a volunteer at the Institute for the Blind of Taiwan in 2015, he asked twelve blind people, what do they think he looks like? Their feedback was in a non-visual way describing his appearance by sounds, smells and spatial movement. The artist later translated their descriptions to Braille and engraved them on 12 leather pieces, the size equal to his body’s height and width. Like this, the engraved leather pieces became a visible yet unintelligible sculpture for people who can't read the Braille words, whereas only the visually impaired people can "see" beyond the superficial appearance and understand the true meaning of this sculpture by touching. In its dialectic between the visibility and invisibility, the work invites us to reflect on our common notions of an artwork and its appearance. | |
Links
Natniu.net | Michael Ku Gallery | More informations 1 | 2
Credits
All reproductions courtesy of the artist © Niu Jun Qiang