HSIUNG CHENG-KAI, MAO HAONAN

Let me use literal not computer-iconographic terminologies to share artworks by two emerging artists, Hsiung Cheng-Kai (nenghuo) and Mao Haonan. Both of their works are based on real-time calculations. If that sounds unfamiliar, maybe you would be more acquainted with the idea of immediate renderings.

Neither CG Animation nor Open Graphics Library, are unfamiliar for me. Once I almost became an animation engineer. It’s not my goal to invite you all to explore what is behind the technology. But, I want to particularly alert some young artists not to be over obsessed with the misunderstanding of supreme in techniques. I named the exhibition Where Would I Go at the very start. No matter for burning flames in Mao Haonan’s artworks or scenes of postwar dark remains in Hsiung Cheng-Kai’s artworks, I can’t help myself sinking into their illusions of chaos, like the prism shuttling through the starry sky. Somehow, I become a part of the artists. Where would they go? Will they have a clear direction or will they be lost in the darkness?

Mao Haonan’s optimism and Hsiung Cheng-Kai’s hesitation impressed me a lot. They both maintain a rare kind of purity which has not been seen for a long time. Along with their purity is the awareness of distresses. During our conversations, one of Hsiung Cheng-Kai’s unfinished projects profoundly touched me. He wants to write a program with the interface designed as a rocket. The time of flight links up with the atoms’ that the rocket keeps raising with the progression of time. He plans to put a camera on the head the rocket facing towards the space of endlessness of darkness. An image of this artwork is immediately depicted in my mind. Mightily, I seem to rise with this rocket. The rocket is ascending with the continuous passing of time to approach to the unreachable terminus.

How long does it take to constitute a narrative poem?

—Sun Qidong