The Fold, 2009.Installation with plaster, shopping trolley, iron plate, printmaking and wire work and miscellaneous objects in the corner.

Shelter, 2009.Welded iron plate and chair, shopping trolley.

Through these projects, I have learned skills of casting, wood carving and screenprint making, and how to operate metal workshop equipments. I have done some experiment of wood carving, including applying on found objects such as abandoned veneer. On the other hand, I have learned the techniques of plaster and flexible-mold casting, knowing the characteristic of some different casting materials. The most exciting part to me was metal sculpture skills, for example using grinders, welder and welding division.

In the final ‘exhibition’ of my studio space, it attempted to deal with a main concept of these projects, which is the relationship between substance and spirit. The ‘artwork’ was all around the images of modern city landscapes in the visible opposing.

The way I presented the work was in a order of ‘double-duality’. The first was divided by the glasses or door, which meant a switch of attitude, and also could be seen as a boundary of reality and imagination. The second duality was the subject / object. It was inspired by Arthur Danto’s “After the End of Art: Contemporary Art and the Pale of History”, and has been interested in what we do not consider as artwork, what we rejected and left outside the pale for ‘art selections’ sake’. Therefore, I decided not to display them in a neat and tidy order.

The objects except the main installation were stacked in a corner randomly. It was designed to make the viewers think about what the subject or object is; there may be no right answers.

(images scanned from sketchbook.)

Besides, I would like to discuss the ‘shelter’ project. I care about the issue about poor and homeless people, that was why I had the idea of the ‘moving birdhouse’, on an found shopping trolley, the proposal was to make a documentary video of traveling on the shelter: to experience how homeless people live and to communicate with any passerby who is willing to understand how different people live. I did not install this work in my studio, because it was supposed to be on the streets. (That is the other duality of gallery / street by the way.) I look forward to spreading love by thus ’trip’, and it was a pity I did not have time to act on, it must be done at least once someday.

Pringles Project (# 2),from summer 2009.

Retrieved potato snacks with found objects,frammed on A5 paper.http://hhsu.weebly.com/pringles.html

Inspired by conceptual artists such as On Kawara’ Today Series, the concept of this project is about an ‘every-day-action’ since summer 2009.

I left pieces of Pringles on the way when I went out or put at a conner in my place, and later collected their ‘dead bodies’ with the ‘mortuary objects’ found aside them. I collected them and framed as transparent caskets; each piece of Pringles had different appearance of death and kept changing.

However, the work did not record the date and time. Some of them were written with little notes, some were having only a number on to record.

It was about life, death and after death; time was significant indeed, yet the floatability of time and space was what my interests in this project. Sometimes it was difficult to retrieve the Pringles when coming back to collect, sometimes the they did not have too many changes… That was capricious and continuous: an intertexture of disappointed and exciting as life going. It was not only visual presentations but also more like a concrete of concept.

Here are some selections from my Pringles Project series; I will keep doing this project, select some of them, update their status and post on my website.

Pringles Project, from summer 2009.Retrieved potato snacks with found objects,frammed on A5 paper.http://hhsu.weebly.com/pringles.html

Untitled (Fridge), 2009.

Fridge and giant post-it notes with hand writing texts.In the fridge: transformed ready-made objects with printed texts, on the fridge: photographs of those objects in different sites.

Untitled (Happy Farm), 2009.Plastic toys and soil in and text on the vegetable drawer of fridge.

This is part of the installation work (Fridge), which is another small-scale installation in the vegetable drawer. The plastic animals ‘inhabiting’ in a wasteland in cold fridge represent a sense of contrast to the nature, and it also creates some uncanny feelings after making use of photographic framings and satirical fake advertisements posted in the online publication.

Untitled (Have A Greasy Day); sections, 2009.

Meat, sexual lubricants and toys, dolls, animal blood, plastic solider, bagel, mould, etc. with art writing;site-specific performance in all day breakfast cafés, grocery store, and other places.

Untitled (Food Magazine), 2009.

Online publication (http://issuu.com/wenhsu/docs/wbl)

The Metamorphosis of Cute Andrex (# 3), 2009.00’29.(Please click image to play the video.)

| THE METAMORPHOSIS OF CUTE ANDREX |

This is a series of three short films, which attempts to experiment and put my understanding of the semiology and phenomenology into playing the material of ‘cute puppy toilet paper’.

When the connection and relationship between cute Labrador puppy become such an uncanny and horror scene due to visual and auditory change and reediting, the meaning is totally different from the intention of the original adverts. Through such a distortion / transforming, the films attempt to understand the tri-dimensional pattern which Roland Barthes has described: the signifier, the signified and the sign; these experiments are also interpreting another ‘meanings’ of consumption society myth in the form of video. Besides the search in Barthes’ Mythologies, the audience might be conscious of some ambiguous conception that I have been always wondering; for example: life and death, the alienation and anxiety of sexuality… in these three videos. This is what I deal with in this work as well.

This is the original idea of the search in ‘Andrex’ inspired by Ed Ruscha: to paint a cute bright scene with a ‘CUTE’ text, then devastate it step by step. After I saw Nicolas Byrne and Anthea Hamilton’s work in Zoo Artfair, I decided to attempt to mix the painting, action, sound and video editing etc. to a time-based outcome. The first three videos were merged with ‘the painting’; however after discussing with my tutor Hannah Sharpe, she suggested me to remove the painting part, which could make the video shorter but more powerful. Therefore, I made some change to finish the final pieces.

The audio was from the original adverts, own collecting sound, sections of music and so on that I re-edited.

(full vision: http://projectmyth.weebly.com/metamorphosis-of-cute-andrex.html)

The Metamorphosis of Cute Andrex (# 1), 2009.00’13.

(Please click image to play the video.)

The Metamorphosis of Cute Andrex (# 2), 2009.00’23.

(Please click image to play the video.)

Alphabet Song of Advert, 2009.00’30.(Please click image to play the video.)

The main concept is to experiment and discuss the relationship between the auditory perception and visual perception, playing with signs...

Inspired and influenced by Pop artists, Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s Eye and Mind and Phenomenology of Perception, the chosen essay Soap-powders and Detergents of Barthes in my course, and after reading Shopping: A Century of Art and Consumer Culture recommend by tutor Margot Bannerman, I decided to use cleaning, toilet and laundry products’ letters from logos and audio from adverts as materials.

I have done some research about the brands and companies of those products, and collected their TV adverts and logos.

I kept the 26 letters of from different products’ logos by removing others in white acrylic paint, and cut the single phoneme of ‘a to z’ up from the TV adverts. The images that I have not completely covered was in order to leave some recognisability of the products themselves.

In this video, I did not only study into perception or semiotics, but also carried out a casual

experiment different rhythms with a little sense of humor and ridicule.

Crack (The Layers of Marks), 2010.A pile of 9 plastic films with the residual grout on each of them.

A selection from ‘Crack (fake)’, 2010.Arranged grout debris.

The Study of Crack (progress), 2010.Setting artificial debris in some places.

Inspired by the experience of assisting young artist Nicolas Deshayes, I started to make a series of experiment about the movement of unfamiliar materials such as latex, sealant, grout, …etc. These experiments have become part of my art outcome, including action (performance), sculpture, photography and so on.

I continue the concept of ignorance and faking into my own art practice and the inspiration of some big issues, which are the earthquakes around the world (and my old memory of Taiwan ‘921 Earthquake’) and the intense contention of ending the death penalty recently taking in Taiwan. About the violence and the right of life, about the vestige of the memories of being hurt and hurting: about the both ways… wish to use this project as my personal ‘letting off’ these struggling thoughts in my mind, and might bring a tiny difference in life to ones who ignore or notice, to the silent but extreme earth for a moment.

A selection from ‘Crack (fake)’, 2010.Arranged grout debris.

View more photographs on my online journal (issuu.com/wenhsu/docs/wbl_y2).

The Structure of Lines of Sight, 2010.Folded paper cut (images from characters in films), black & white didital photography.

I was assisting my tutor Eva Weinmayr’s project as my work based learning programme at the starting point. My idea was to seek inspirations while doing the street searching and image snaps in films for her.

However, it turned out that the snaps of couples in DVDs would not be use in her project. Yet it was not that I have gained nothing during thus process. The time of researching in couples from DVD snaps, I was thinking about how to apply these to my own practice or future work. After the visual fatigue caused by hundreds of single frames about ‘couples’ I cut from DVDs, I found it interesting how people, especially couples’ lines of sight construct in no matter 4:3 or 16:9 screen. I believe this could be developed and played with. Therefore, I made some little experiment of the lines and structure of the lines of view of couple and partners, etc.

I drew the concrete lines of view of people and then cut them on the tracing paper; folding the lines and figures, see how they change the relationships between one another and, see how the lines create and change the space.

| The Structure of Lines Of Sight |

This is the original paper cut of figures and the lines of views.

This is the folding and changed one.

Beside the paper cut folding experiment, there it has come up another idea when I study the image of the ‘invisible’ lines and the ways they affect to relationships and spaces. I imagine: there is one of my favourite film and I use such an ‘unreliable measurement’ to present every moments when the characters’ sight falls; and all the various of space could be layers of a three dimensional work or a series of massive abstract painting, or make another experimental film with this concept… Also the colour, or for example the material of lines, are still many to consider and development. This might be an idea that I could use in the future.

(Original image is from Pulp Fiction, 1994.)

Memory of the Dead One (partial), 2010.Sketch printed on and latex covered shirt.

Combining my interest of photography, the experiment of sculpture / installation, I used some different processes to take a series of photographs about my ‘sculpture’ of a latex shirt sited in the woods.

The shirt is one of mine, which has a print of portrait sketched by myself. This work is consist of personal and secret memories and ritual; like somehow a dead insect flying back to its belonged, since the shirt / memories has become specimen in the reality, the memories would transform to an ‘not-there-anymore’ object in the mind, it exists in ‘somewhere seems here’, but no one knows where the Here is…

I also documented some little clips as a ‘moving sculpture’. When the wind blows, the shirt moves and dances, yet it does like a dead one because the latex congeal the shirt’s shape and depress its movement.

View more images on my online journal (issuu.com/wenhsu/docs/wbl_y2).

Passing, 2010.04:29(Please click the image to play.)

This video work is waiting to be projected repeatedly on a stone-like sculpture of shell, which is still in progress and will be an installation for the degree show altogether. The moving images are taking people passing by from streets by different ways of filming; most of them are filming by operating different lenses and dancing hands in coordination. The colourful shine and movement merging with the plain video of pedestrians is expected to create the confusion of reality when the audience sees the projection on the sculpture; he or she becomes one of the passer-bys, and the shine in cave/shell is still shining for itself or even for no reason as the relationship between life, time and space.