Skip to main content

Taiwanese artist Chang Li-ren's artwork showcased in Spain virtual exhibition

  • Date:2021-06-08
Taiwanese artist Chang Li-ren's artwork showcased in Spain virtual exhibition

The Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Spain collaborated with Chi-wen Gallery, jointly presented a series of artworks "Battle City (戰鬥城市)" by Taiwanese artist Chang Li-ren (張立人) in the virtual exhibition at Barcelona's Loop Fair in November last year.

"Battle City," an animation video-work is one of Chang's representative work, it addresses a variety of issues in this society, and depicts collective hysteria in the face of incompetence as well as portrays an imagination of how capitalism operates in its extreme form in a city, just like a projection of reality. Chang showed the microcosm of Taiwan society through microscopic art, which is curated to echo the exhibition’s theme "Tales from an Old World(舊世界的故事)."

To reflect the harsh reality of life as an artist, Chang rented a small apartment in Taipei – a city with high cost of living, and built a small-scale installation of a city within the apartment by utilizing common media and images, to portray the struggles of life in a city.

Chang was awarded the top prize in the Taipei Art Awards and he was nominated for the Taishin Arts Award in 2010. He always cared more than the scope of traditional visual art and mastered the boundary between virtual and reality.

Due to COVID-19 travel restrictions, Chang and curator Huang Chi-wen(黃其玟) were unable to travel to Spain. The organizers of the exhibition specially created videos in Chinese and Spanish, to allow the audience to understand the works that are on display. In the videos, the artists also explain the process and concept behind their process of creation.

Chi-Wen Gallery, founded in 2004 by Chi-Wen Huang, is one of Taiwan's leading galleries, showing the best of contemporary Taiwanese art with a focus on video and photography. Over the years, the gallery has been committed to promoting contemporary art in Taiwan and actively introducing experimental new media creations to the world.