| dc.description.abstract | Chen Shui-Tsai (b. 1946) and Lee Jinn-Shyan (1957-2019) were artists active in southern Taiwan since the late 1970s, primarily creating works in painting. Their works are often praised for embodying local imagery and stemming from a marginal consciousness. Particularly, their participation in the Taiwan Project in the 1990s is seen as a manifestation of this spirit, with their artistic statements reflecting an ambition to depict the landscape of their era. Examining their works in the Taiwan Project reveals numerous “industrial” images, and looking back at their early works (from the late 1970s to the 1980s) also shows a focus on “Industrial Landscape”. “Industry” has evidently become a significant element in their landscape paintings. Previous research on the industrial imagery in their works has largely viewed it as a reflection of Kaohsiung′s heavy industrial city characteristics and connected it to the local art movement “Kaohsiung Black Painting.” However, these discussions have mostly taken a local art history perspective, with less attention to their relationship with the overall history of Taiwanese art. Additionally, the distinctive collage characteristics in the Taiwan Project have been described mainly in terms of visual style, without in-depth exploration of the relationship between technique and subject matter. Furthermore, the marginal discourse, which suggests a resistance to the mainstream, has not elaborated on its connection to the landscape of the era.
This thesis aims to study, through the examples of the two artists discussed, the relationship between “industry” and landscapes, and their significance in the contemporary era. Focusing on their individual paintings and works from the Taiwan Project in the early 1990s, it explores the perspectives and associations with the era′s atmosphere reflected in these works, and re-examines the consciousness suggested by the keywords surrounding them. The goal is to outline a reference framework for understanding the representation of “landscape” in Taiwan during the 1990s.
The first chapter reviews the perspectives and consciousness reflected by “industry” in Taiwanese art history and extends the discussion to the “Industrial Landscape” in the early works of the two artists. Additionally, it examines the evolution of collage in Taiwanese art history and how these two artists inherited and innovated in the use of collage techniques. The second chapter focuses on Chen Shui-Tsai’s “Industrial Landscape” paintings from the early 1990s, exploring the relationship between his pictorial language and industrial themes, the connection between “Industrial Landscape” and the “fin-de-siècle” atmosphere in the art scene at the time, and how he used photo collages in the Taiwan Project to depict rural landscapes on the verge of industrialization, projecting concerns about the near future through industrial imagery. The third chapter discusses Lee Jinn-Shyan’s works from the 1990s, starting with his paintings of military facilities and bunker ruins, examining the potential for industrial imagery to expand into military and historical realms. It also investigates how he used collage in the Taiwan Project to present views of “Industrial Landscape” in everyday life. | en_US |