Sparwasser presents:
WRONG(ED) ATTITUDES
TSUI KUANG-YU
SU HUI-YUFebruary 19. - March 18., 2006
Opening: February 18., 19:00-23:00, Torstrasse 161, Berlin Mitte
Panel Discussion: February 19, 19:00-21:00
With: Su Hui-yu, Manray Hsu, Maren Richter, Vera Tollmann, Tsui Kuang-yu,Florian ZeyfangOpening hours Wed.-Fri. 16:00-19:00, Sat. 14:00-18:00
Curated by The Embassy of Contemporary Art (Manray Hsu & Maren Richter)
Funded by Cultural Centre of Taiwan in Paris
Supported by Council for Cultural Affairs Executive Yuan ROC(The exhibition will also be shown at Cultural Centre of Taiwan in Paris
March 9. - April 26., 2006, www.ccacctp.org)
"Wrong(ed) Attitudes" is an exhibition of two young Taiwanese artists, TSUI Kuang-yu and SU Hui-yu, whose works deal with the body and space, global culture politics, and the contemporary city as well as social predicaments of Taiwan. Both artists use video as a means to convey performative interventions into everyday contexts. By wryly mimicking the "right" ways of behaviour and thinking, these performances reveal layers of ambiguity and instability of social roles, urban environments, and cultural-political codes, which both plaque and enrich the contemporary society. The attitudes thus projected by the performances straddle between the wrong and the wronged. By making "intended mistakes", these two artists propose a possible way to reflect on the current global paranoid of the self and the other.
TSUI's videos, featured at the Taiwan Pavilion in Venice Biennale 2005, show the artist bracketing the relationship between himself and the surroundings by attempts to transform himself to different social roles, or even "plants," in order to "disappear" into the immediate environment, or by wrong(ed) behaviors in seemingly right contexts (such as playing golf on some green spot in the city). Taking cues from Chinese martial arts movie, the performances also inject a supernatural and humorous tint into the scenario. TSUI Kuang-yu will show two series from his famous action-video: Eighteen Copper Guardians in Shao-Lin Temple and Penetration: The Penetration (2'10"), The Perceptive (2'), The Spontaneous (1'50") (2001), and The Shortcut to Systematic Life (Superficial Circumstances, 9", 2002; I Am Fine, I Don't Get Wet, 3'40", 2002; City Spirits, 4'50", 2005).
SU targets on pop culture, particularly soap opera, MTV and fashion, and its overpowering relationship to personal identity and cultural economy. His diverse practices include using role-play to reverse the psychic logic of pop culture and direct interventions into the events presented by mainstream cultural producers such as the fashion industry. SU Hui-yu's recent documented intervention into a promotion event of the Taiwanese super model Lin Chiling, The Super Model Love (2005) will be featured, along with recreations of TV and MTV scenes: Endless Recalling, No. 2 (a recurrent imitation of "No!" in popular TV programs, 2005); Bad (a parody of Michael Jackson's "Bad", 2005). He borrows the images from media and political representation and produces a quasi-subjective reality. With this tactic, he denounces "right" as a politically and culturally driven, deficient term.