From Sanyu to Roland Barthes: Chen Wei-ting on why painting and poetry go hand-in-hand
You’ll recognize artist Chen Wei-ting’s (b. 1991) works by the curious innocence that each canvas holds. Maybe it’s because we often associate scribbly lines and pastel colours with children’s drawings, or maybe it has something to do with the dewy eyes– it’s always about the eyes. Born in Tainan, Taiwan and now based in Tokyo, Japan, Chen Wei Ting is a painter-slash-writing person (reference: read his instagram bio), who urges his viewers to also read his paintings. Chen holds a special relationship with his paintings, because in fact, it’s one that’s triangular with poetry and literature.
DK:
What is the relationship between writing, poetry, and the childhood imagery in your work?
What is the relationship between writing, poetry, and the childhood imagery in your work?
CWT:
In the Japanese language, the verbs ‘to draw’ and ‘to write [poetry]’ share the same pronunciation – ‘kaku (かく)’; painting and poetry are both acts of making a mark on paper. When I draw or paint, I am writing poetry as well. I see poetry as part of the work – it is a continuation. Some people may wonder which comes first, poetry or painting, but it is not really a question I’m concerned with. As I said, they are both part of me, so the order of things has no bearing on the experience of viewing/reading.
These mark-makings can be fragments of different kinds. Bits and pieces coming together to become ‘me’: flashes of childhood imagery, pieces of symbolism and emotively-charged objects are some of the ways in which I use memory to communicate the paradoxes in our latter teenage years. We encounter paradoxes that swing us between brightness and darkness over the course of our lives, and they are like the pupil of the eye that has entered the gloom, or like that line in one of Pu Shu’s (朴樹) songs, ‘The Road to Ordinary (「平凡之路」)‘: ‘Despairing, and yet hoping, crying and yet laughing; ordinary being’ (「絕望著，也渴望著，也哭也笑，平凡著」). I think these compositions all express our sense of uncertainty with regard to our endings.
DK:
What message do you wish to bring to your viewers through your paintings? When I read some of the poetry that accompany your individual pieces, I realised that the running themes often are dichotomies such as good/bad, sadness/joy, brightness/darkness. What is the overarching message in your oeuvre?
What message do you wish to bring to your viewers through your paintings? When I read some of the poetry that accompany your individual pieces, I realised that the running themes often are dichotomies such as good/bad, sadness/joy, brightness/darkness. What is the overarching message in your oeuvre?
CWT:
I’ve heard it said that ‘painting is poetry on mute, poetry is painting that speaks’. It’s not always clear that the artist is the speaker in the poem, since a poem can be narrated in first or third person, or even put on a disguise of the second person.
In my writing, I use a lot of rhetorical questions. Perhaps this is because I keep thinking in antitheses. The yin and yang symbol is composed of black and white: there is a whtie dot within the black half of the symbol, and a black dot within the white. Could it be that these seeming opposites are not contradictory to each other, but in fact complementary? Isn’t it that we can feel happiness because we have known sorrow? Everything has to come from something, but something must have come from nothing. The true way of things has no solid shape or form, yet it follows nature. The world stands in neutrality, and we circle all around it trying to find our balance – this seems to be what living is.
DK:
What are ‘fragments’ and what is the relationship between ‘fragments’ and your work?
What are ‘fragments’ and what is the relationship between ‘fragments’ and your work?
CWT:
Roland Barthes composed his literary work (i.e. A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments) out of ‘fragments’, which basically are scenes from daily life. Barthes wrote these scenes into fragments, which he then pieced together like collage; understanding this process is the key to interpreting his work.
As I see it, my own works are fragments too. This is particularly true when I have collated my works into a sort of map, with dots on it forming lines that eventually all lead to me. When organising your works becomes a way of delineating your personal history, you become a collector of jigsaw pieces.
Yet I believe that each of these fragments carries with it a particular moment – like a train carrying its passenger into the unknown. If you are the creator, you know what that particular moment means, and perhaps you and only you may know the truth behind the creation. Of course, viewers interpret the work in much the same way (i.e. attaching meanings that only they know onto the fragments); the work is open-ended, after all.
DK:
How does meaning behind painting (creating brush strokes on canvas) change when you work with sculpture or any other medium?
How does meaning behind painting (creating brush strokes on canvas) change when you work with sculpture or any other medium?
CWT:
I don’t really have an answer for this. However, I think that meaning remains with the work itself. Admittedly, I create narratives with poetry, but poetry is quite a mutable and non-linear medium too. It allows for leaps of fancy and interchanges in narrative point-of-view, and so everyone reads it differently. As in the case of The Little Prince, the text means different things to us at different age: the significance of the rose, the fox, even the planet and the elephant is always shifting. And so are we – we change without even realising.
MM:
What do you think of the beauty or the power of contemporary Chinese poems (vs. classical poetry with traditional rhyming schemes)?
CWT:
I think they have different aesthetic effects. I actually majored in classical literature at university, and only started reading contemporary poetry later on. There are subject matters or thematic issues that are unique to each period; the same is true for music, where you can see both the gradual development from classical to contemporary music as well as individual artistic expressions.
As for poetry, I have been reading some poems by the Chinese writer Wuqing (烏青) lately, which are quite alternative – even rebellious – in their personal nature and sense of loneliness. There is also the Taiwanese writer and lyricist Hsia Yu (夏宇), whose poetry treats the goings-on of daily life, and also incorporates wordplay, metre, and rhythm. Lyrics by the Chinese singer-songwriter Song Dongye (宋冬野), the Chinese alternative rock band Omnipotent Youth Society (萬能青年旅店, nicknamed 萬青), and the Taiwanese singer-songwriter Deserts Chang (焦安溥) are very interesting as well. Rather than characterising me as a poetry-lover, you might as well say that I like writing of any kind and form.
I think they have different aesthetic effects. I actually majored in classical literature at university, and only started reading contemporary poetry later on. There are subject matters or thematic issues that are unique to each period; the same is true for music, where you can see both the gradual development from classical to contemporary music as well as individual artistic expressions.
As for poetry, I have been reading some poems by the Chinese writer Wuqing (烏青) lately, which are quite alternative – even rebellious – in their personal nature and sense of loneliness. There is also the Taiwanese writer and lyricist Hsia Yu (夏宇), whose poetry treats the goings-on of daily life, and also incorporates wordplay, metre, and rhythm. Lyrics by the Chinese singer-songwriter Song Dongye (宋冬野), the Chinese alternative rock band Omnipotent Youth Society (萬能青年旅店, nicknamed 萬青), and the Taiwanese singer-songwriter Deserts Chang (焦安溥) are very interesting as well. Rather than characterising me as a poetry-lover, you might as well say that I like writing of any kind and form.
MM:
How do you manage and coordinate the visual and verbal elements in your artworks?
How do you manage and coordinate the visual and verbal elements in your artworks?
CWT:
I have not tried. In terms of verbal elements, there was this time when I was collaborating with the Japanese band KUKIKODAN (空氣公團), and they asked me to interpret a Japanese passage in my language, which they then wanted to include in their album. I had to think long and hard how to translate; I kept simplifying the text, tried out different variations, read it back and forth, and eventually chose one version to hand in to them. In a way, this is not so different from us typing in a text and getting Google Translate result – it involves both manual and mechanical processes. The mechanical part comes into play when we don’t really know what the output is supposed to be, but it always gives you a response one way or another.
In terms of the visual, my notebook is filled with all kinds of odd shapes, and if I pick one notebook out at random at home, I really can’t tell you when it was from – it’s all just randomness. This is why I have not coordinated elements in my works on purpose, but they were meant to go a certain direction anyways. A work is the culmination of consciousness – but is consciousness meant to follow intuition?
MM:
What’s your opinion regarding the distinction between art and crafts?
What’s your opinion regarding the distinction between art and crafts?
CWT:
Ever since Duchamp put a urinal into the museum, the definition has constantly been turned around. Perhaps tomorrow’s will reverse today’s again. Me personally, I think we need to keep an open mind.
MM:
Who’s your favorite Asian artist or poet?
Who’s your favorite Asian artist or poet?
CWT:
I’ve always had this problem where I can’t pick just one! But for Asian artists/poets, I do quite admire Sanyu (常玉), Koji Nakazono (中園孔二), Ouyang Chun (歐陽春), Hsia Yu (夏宇), Bi Gan (畢贛), Bei Dao (北島), Shuntarō Tanikawa (谷川俊太郎), and Song Dongye (宋冬野).
MM:
Do you take inspirations from historic artists or poets?
Do you take inspirations from historic artists or poets?
CWT:
I like Marc Chagall and his depiction of liberated bodies and surrealist existence. Cy Twombly was likewise so instinctual and uninhibited in his calligraphic and writing-related creations. I remember reading Kuriyagawa Hakuson’s Symbol of Ennui (our own translation of 厨川白村,《苦悶的象徵》) as a university student, and it mentions two kinds of force, one being the life force (from one’s own existence) and the other being external force (oppression from the outside world) – the conflict between the two engenders creation. The ‘passion’ of creation is none other than this. Another is Camus’ The Stranger: the gun, the sun, and those cries of hate all occupy my thoughts.
DK:
Tell us a bit about your recent move to Tokyo! What is the artistic environment like in Tokyo as opposed to Taipei? Has it impacted your work at all?
Tell us a bit about your recent move to Tokyo! What is the artistic environment like in Tokyo as opposed to Taipei? Has it impacted your work at all?
CWT:
I’ve been in Tokyo for three years now. The second year I was here, COVID-19 became my ‘classmate’, and we shared the experience of attending Tokyo University of the Arts together. While there, I met many artists who worked in various areas, who challenged themselves every day, and who were intensely focused on their work. We experimented with a lot of different media, including stone, wood, metal, and glass, as well as performance art. These cross-media attempts were truly invaluable and interesting, as well as limitless. This experience has had much impact on my thinking and creative processes. Even with writing, I’ve been trying to deconstruct – to destroy structure and the notion of the absolute. Poetry is the core of my creation, and yet my poetry is built around rhetorical questions that question absolutism.
When I was in Taipei, everything was too habitual: the language, the streets, the structures. Yet I dislike comfort, as the saying goes: ‘You live by way of hardships and worries; you perish by way of comforts and pleasures (生於憂患，死於安樂)’. I am actually planning to participate in an artist residency; I’m just thinking, maybe this can break some habits for me. Only when we’re not surrounded by habits can we create something out of the ordinary.
Dyana Kim, Marie Ma; translation by Gigi Leung