Forging a New Path : Chen Chun-Hao Solo Exhibition

The exhibition title, Forging a New Path, perfectly encapsulates Chen's approach during his mountain expeditions. Discarding the cliché imagery and conventional perspectives of the Baiyue, he utilized aerial drone photography to delve into the treacherous terrains of the Snow Mountain Range-places inaccessible to the human body-capturing the perilous and magnificent Snow Mountain South Wall. This literally fulfills the physical meaning of "Forging a New Path." Concurrently, the title serves as a metaphor for the artist's profound ambition to break free from the traditional landscape painting framework and forge a new frontier in contemporary visual vocabulary. Escaping the constraints of past subjects, the new works echo a subversion in thematic choice. No longer bound by the cunfa (texture strokes) and scattered perspective of traditional ink painting, the artist delves deeper into how his signature "Headless Pins" (fine pin nails) can articulate the textures, light, and shadow of realistic mountains capes.

The exhibition's key visuals-Snow Mountain South Wall No. 1, No. 2, and No. 3, Pintian Mountain Folds depicting Mount Pintian, and the nearly two-meter-long Daba Enveloped in Clouds-all demonstrate the artist's use of varying densities of Headless Pins and the refraction of light. He segments the picture plane into up to four or five tonal gradations, meticulously carving out the profound depths of cirques, the sharpness of ridges, and the rugged textures of rock faces. Diverging from the warmth of classical landscapes, these new works exude a contemporary coldness. By isolating fragments of mountain walls or leaving negative space to represent swirling mist, the images reveal an unprecedented abstract quality. This visual oscillation between the figurative and the abstract is precisely the unique effect yielded by the metal headless pins as light shifts: up close, the densely packed nails form a cold, pure arrangement radiating the icy order of industrial materials; from a distance, these tens of thousands of metallic particles instantly transform into a majestic, towering alpine panorama.

If the Baiyue peaks showcase a macroscopic majesty, the series themed around the Taiwan Juniper converges the perspective onto a microscopic tension of life. Tempered by the severe cold and blizzards of high altitudes, the Taiwan Juniper grows into a gnarled, twisted, yet remarkably resilient existence. By driving metal headless pins densely along the interlocking paths of the trunks, Chen traces the entwined, contorted, and uniquely wild cursive script (kuangcao)-like postures of the trees through the rhythmic interplay of density and sparsity. Simultaneously, he accents these scenes with the vivid presence of birds. This touch of ethereal agility achieves a poetic balance between the hard and the soft, the inorganic and the organic.

In addition to the aforementioned Baiyue and Taiwan Juniper series, this exhibition continues the lineage of his 2024 solo show The Myriad Doors of Existence. Classic works from that series, such as "Imitating Ju Ran's Summer Mountains by Chang Dai-Chien" and "Imitating Liu Daoshi's Lake and Mountains in Early Morning by Chang Dai-Chien", are also on view. Furthermore, Chen debuts a monumental four-panel folding screen, "Copying Calligraphy "Today's Fine Banquet" by Fu Shan", a format he has never attempted before, comprehensively presenting his broad artistic spectrum as he navigates between classical imitation and contemporary vocabulary.

In essence, whether in past classical imitations or current mountains capes, the massive arrangement and convergence of ready-made objects manifest Chen Chun-Hao's ingenious integration of Pointillist image deconstruction and Gestalt psychology's "Law of Closure." Through the artist's precise calculation and arrangement of the headless pins, the viewer's brain instinctively fills in the gaps, restoring them into complete lines and images. When copying classical landscapes or portraits of beauties in the past, Chen primarily focused on the contemporary translation of traditional ink painting's cunfa and ink resonance (moyun), intending to recreate classical rhythmic vitality through metallic luster. Today, he propels this highly personal vocabulary of headless pins toward natural topography and object formats like folding screens, continuously broadening his creative possibilities.

As curator Chang Li-Hao observes, in an era where the waves of AI and digital technology sweep across the globe, we can still witness the artist choosing the purest form of physical labor and spiritual concentration. Having studied under masters Lin Chang-Hu and Chang Kuang-Pin in his early years, and having received guidance from Lee Yi-Hong, Chen is naturally well-versed in the rhythmic vitality of traditional calligraphy and painting. This classical foundation ensures that even as he later abandoned brush and ink to dance with cold, hard industrial headless pins, his works accurately convey the spiritual philosophy of Eastern ink painting. Yet, what is most striking about his new works in this exhibition is how he breaks through his previous framework, revealing to the world his equally masterful command of Western objective realism. To a certain extent, Forging a New Path is Chen Chun-Hao's consistent choice on his creative path: unwilling to repeat past formulas of success, every transition and thematic leap is a renewed breakthrough of his own artistic boundaries. Walking this continuously "forged" "new path," Chen Chun-Hao, with the purity of an ascetic, reveals to us a magnificent panorama that is exclusively his own.