NADA NEW YORK 2023

Like his peers, Hou’s careerspans a period of rapid socialand cultural change in Taiwan.In contrast to the massmovements and aggressiveopposition prevalent in his time,Hou’s art preciously carries thesensibility of a generation. Hou’searly works in the 1980scoincided with the lift of martiallaw, but rather than responding to the emancipation of society and the ‘larger self,’ Hou’s response is a collision of the taboosregarding body, sexuality, and ego in Asian society, as well as a rebellion challenges thetraditional academic aesthetics. The sex and violence in Hou’s works are no longer his privatedesire - they are the topics that the public refuses to address. With his impactful themes and visualexpressions, Hou became one of the leading figures in Taiwan’s avant-garde artists at the time,and the first and most significant one who explored the eroticism of human desire in Taiwanesecontemporary art.

After 35 years of making art, Hou reflected on hiscareer and shifted back to painting. In 2021 and2022, he created a series of printed fabric paintings hemade with elements he had developed previously.Through combining the present international contextwith local printed fabric, Hou also created a series ofbrand-new images. The choice of the fabric could beseen as his recent focus on desire and childhood. In theseries, many works are made with embroidery,recalling the lines of the woodcut prints he hasproduced since the 1990s. What these ‘Hou-styled’images bring to light is not only a future reference ofopposing, satirizing, and teasing, they also express thestatus of an artist who is nearly 60 years old.

Hou ChunMing ‘s works are not about clean and gorgeous contemporary expression, nor aboutthe grandiosity of the overwhelming group consciousness, but recordings of private secrets thathave been long ignored or hidden, and the liberation of the body. Such practice reveals how thenext generation should face the rivalry, irony, and sarcasm and look for ‘true freedom’ forhuman beings.