Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts

Hensan Pear Trees & Hosui Pears - Chen Liang-Hsuan Solo Exhibition

2024.07.19～2024.10.13

10:00 - 17:00

102 Gallery, KdMoFA

Exhibition Introduction

“Hensan Pear Trees & Hosui Pears” is a three-channel video work that captures the highly labor-intensive and intricate pear farming techniques of Taiwanese farmers, using a single-point perspective to split the frame into three segments reassembling the sky, land, sounds, and human activities. Nature follows its own temporal rhythm, while human actions align with a corresponding yet distinct tempo. Agricultural labor represents generations of cooperation between humans and nature, now obscured by the urban-dominated pace of life.

In Taiwan, the top-grafting sand pears are produced by top-grafting Japanese pear varieties from completely different timing and regions onto the less marketable Hensan pear trees, hybridizing more perfect products. Farmers technologically consolidate varied timelines, determining planting schedules, grafting, leaf removal, and awaiting the reawakening and growth of pear blossoms. They also handle fruit picking, refrigerated storage, transportation via sea, land and air, as well as import/export procedures and tariffs. Through the negotiation between humans and nature, and among peoples and nations, the "pear" is magically re-grown into its appearance. Pears are no longer mere food, but the time-regulation skills/ trees resulted from farmers’ crafting and lobor. The fragmented and complexly reassembled labor time and the inherent time of the pear trees ultimately converge in the city as seasonal goods on shelves, becoming an unnoticed part of the urban landscape.

Exhibition Introduction

About the Artist

Chen Liang-Hsuan graduated from the Graduate Institute of Fine Arts at Taipei National University of the Arts in 2012 and obtained her MFA degree in 2016 from the Film, Video, New Media, and Animation Department of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Exhibitions she has taken part include solo exhibition at Haiton Art Center (2019), screening event at Shanghai OCAT Weekend of Photography (2020), Dumbo Open Studio (2020), “Between Earth and the Sky” at Taipei Fine Arts Museum (2020), “The Racing Will Continue, The Dancing Will Stay” at Guangzhou Times Museum (2019), “Trans_2018-2019” at AIAV, Yamaguchi, Japan (2019), Taipei Art Awards at MOCA Taipei (2017), “Rencontres Internationales” at La Gaite Lyrique in Paris and Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin, Shin Kong Cinemas Experimental Film Competition for the “South Taiwan Film Festival”, “EXDOC: L’insolite ordinaire - Liang-Hsuan Chen and Mie Kurihara” at FranceDoc in Paris (2017), “15” at the Fat City Gallery in Chicago (2015); and “Schizophrenia Taiwan 2.0” at La Maison de Metallos in Paris, Transmediale in Berlin, Ars Electronica in Linz, and Les Instant Video in Marseille (2014). Chen was presented with honourable mention award of The Taipei Art Awards in 2017 and the S-An Art Award in 2011.

Chen's work often attempts to deploy the space-time journeys with successive time segments in the space. Behind the camera, she utilizes video for narrative and sound as spatial installations, blending the experimental documentary presentation with home videotape to create a surreal realm that merges Taiwanese daily life, personal memories, and dreams.

About the Artist