Soka Art

Period: 10/12 - 11/02

I have often imagined that when God creates something, when is it too much, when is it too little, when is it just right, and when is it just too much?

At the 2020 Taipei Biennale, we joined a research project led by a French artist to study the carbon footprint of art production. The conclusion was that most of the individual art creations were environmentally friendly, but the waste of wooden crates and plastic wrappings used in transportation for exhibitions needed to be improved. At that time, Ms. Hsiao Li-hung said to me, “Ah Bin, when we first met, you could turn any discarded material into a work of art...”.

When the gods created the Chimera, did they pick up unwanted materials and assemble them randomly? Or did they make something out of nothing? When we were young, we naturally understood the cause and effect of myths, but now we can't remember that the Chimera had a lion's body, a goat's head, and a snake's tail. It seems to be the case that people can't remember what a chimera really looks like, so they imagine millions of different chimeras, and so chimera has become a moniker, chimera, genetically engineered, misplaced chromosomes, all chimeras.

My works often refer to mythical animals: Zeus becomes a bull, a Pegasus is born from the blood of Medusa's decapitation, a stag becomes a woman's lover. I always like to say that Adonis, the handsome king of the forest, was given a golden branch by the goddess of love to become the first king of the gods, and that the kings of the gods were once divine, and that their divinity was to be resurrected from the dead, as in the harsh summers and the cold winters, as in the stormy winds and the tidal waves, and so on and so forth. That's why I like to disassemble and reassemble my works so much, and I like the fact that they can be reproduced.

In recent years, the art market has cooled down, and I have started to keep my works on hand. Therefore, this exhibition includes both brand new and recycled works, and the title of the exhibition is Star and God's Beasts. The star is a shape that I like very much, because it has no direction, and the animals in myths are the subjects that I am interested in, because they repeatedly tell the story of man transforming into beasts, and the beasts wanting to transform into man again.