Hsu Che-Yu
Re-rupture
15’19”, 2017
This work is a cooperation with the long-time collaborator, scriptwriter Chen Wan-Yin. While suspended from a crane eight stories up in the air, a man performs a guitar solo. It’s a reenactment inspired by the particular relationship between subculture and political movement in 1990s Taiwan.
In 1995, there was a human-shape balloon on the top of Chongxing Bridge in Taipei, and there was also the attempt of suspending all kinds of items in the air, such as washing machine, boiling hot pot, the statue of Chiang Kai-Shek, and sex doll, trying to crash them to the ground. But the plan failed eventually; nothing was destroyed. Before everything started, it ended because of the self-explosion of the human-shape balloon. The same year under Chongxing Bridge, there was also a large scale fight. The people present there that day slashing each other with iron rod or sashimi knife. When the artist found the people involved, however, they told Hsu it was actually a fight between political factions.
Hsu Che-Yu (b. 1985) is an artist based in Taipei and Amsterdam. Previously, Hsu obtained a master’s degree from the Graduate Institute of Plastic Arts, Tainan National University of the Arts (Taiwan). Since 2019, he had participated in the residency program in HISK (Ghent, 2019–2020) and Le Fresnoy – Studio national des arts contemporains (Tourcoing, 2020–2022). In 2022, he begins his two-year art residency in Rijksakademie in Amsterdam. Hsu Che-Yu works as an artist who primarily creates animations, videos, and installations that feature the relations between media and memories. What matters to the artist is not simply the history of events traceable through media, but also the construction and visualization of memories, be they private or collective.
Hsu has solo exhibitions at Liang Gallery (Taipei, 2022), Vanguard Gallery (Shanghai, 2020), Taipei Fine Arts Museum (2015), Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts (Taipei, 2012), SAT Society for Arts and Technology (Montreal, 2012). He has participated in the Bienal de São Paulo (2021), Seoul Mediacity Biennale (2021), Sonsbeek20→24 Quadrennial public program (2021), Actually, the Dead Are Not Dead: Techniques of Becoming (Württembergischer Kunstverein, Stuttgart, 2021), VIDEONALE.18 (2021), Shanghai Biennale (2018), London Design Biennale (2018), Asian Art Biennial(Taichung, 2017), and film festivals IFFR International Film Festival Rotterdam (2022, 2020, 2018), NYFF New York Film Festival (2020). He was awarded Videonale Award of the Fluentum Collection (Kunstmuseum Bonn, 2021), Loop Barcelona Video Art Production Award (Han Nefkens Foundation, 2020), Taishin Annual Grand Prize (Taishin Bank Foundation for Arts and Culture, 2016), Finalist for HUGO BOSS ASIA ART (2019).
The video is screened as part of Home Is Where The Music Is at Reading Biscuit Factory.
The event is funded by the British Council’s UK-China Connections through Culture (CTC) Grants.