Chen Chiung-hui Call of the Wild

Yu Hsiao-p'ei　/　photos Arthur Jeng　/　tr. by Peter Eberly

March 1986

中文

Chen Chiung-hui here combines aborigine snake and human motifs into a new creation.

"This beach is really beautiful! If I lived around here, I'd come for a walk every day," I said.

"It can get boring after a while, though. To keep on finding pleasure in anything takes a bit of patience, not just a momentary infatuation." The person who said this had a short mustache and a dark, round face that still revealed a touch of the child.

The beach, at Yuanli in northwest Taiwan, remains unspoiled by civilization. The ocean that morning flashed golden in the rays of the sun, while several nameless seabirds pecked at the crab shells and fish bones left stranded by the receding tide. A coastguardsman went by, walking a bounding German shepherd. As they passed, the frightened seabirds flapped their wings and flew away.

"I rarely come here myself," he continued. "One day I was sitting here sketching when a Coast Guard officer came by and asked me what I was up to. I said I lived here. He didn't believe me. He said he had been here for five years and never knew I existed. But I've been carving here for 10 years now. . . ."

Chen Chiung-hui, 37 years old, is the only artist in the country, as of now at any rate, to have taken up aboriginal wood carving as a lifelong profession and developed an individual style in it. Yet he is a pure "plainsman," with no aborigine forebears.

In fact, Chen Chiung-hui's affinity with aboriginal carving is not without its basis. As a little boy on the family farm in Yuanli, he liked to chop trees with a machete and once carved away for several months at a twisted old swamp oak behind the house, intending to shape it into a dragon. But the tree withered and wound up resembling less a dragon than a "dead snake," for which the young Chen received a licking from his father.

Yuanli is in Miaoli County, not far from Sanyi, long famous for its wood carving. After graduating from elementary school, Chen was apprenticed to Cheng Yulin, who taught him the basic skills of carving. What's more, "Master Cheng" collected primitive wood carvings, from Taiwan, the South Pacific, and elsewhere. In their free time, master and apprentice would sip tea, admire and handle the carvings, and discuss their merits. There Chen discovered a whole new world.

"The artists' powers of imagination were extremely rich; their composition and modelling, both natural and creative. And the knifework is not something that can be learned in a couple of years. It's been passed down from generation to generation. Each family has its own special craftsmanship," Chen says.

After three years, Chen completed his apprenticeship and was hired by a trader in aborigine artifacts. This work exposed him to yet more primitive art and sharpened his powers of judgment. Also sharpened was his appetite for aboriginal carvings. He eventually quit his job, packed up an axe and an awl, and went off to the mountains to live as a gypsy among the aborigines.

"The aborigines are very hospitable. They don't question why you're there. This helped me immerse myself in the culture reflected in their carvings," Chen says.

Chen found that primitive carving differs from most other carving in a fundamental way. It is decorative or narrative in function, not pure art for art's sake. There is no rivalry between schools and styles, and the artist's greatest reward is his own satisfaction and the praise of his fellow tribesmen. The aborigines' art is lively and unrestrained, and each artist has his own distinct individuality.

Chen spent two years in the mountains before performing his military service and another year there after he got out. Then he went back to Yuanli, where he has been carving ever since.

Chen's early works, featuring snakes and masks or men with knives and women with jugs on their heads, were rather derivative--until he discovered the functional side of aboriginal carving. He then started collecting wooden mortars and oxcart wheels, shaping the one into chairs and the other into tables, enlivening them with traditional patterns and designs. These works were very popular at his first one-man exhibition in 1982, where he also displayed practical utensils and ornaments carved from bamboo or sandalwood, inlaid with shells and tiles.

But his style soon changed again. In sculptures like "Nude," "Remembrance," "Reliance," "Prayer," and "Night Lodging," he used both aboriginal and contemporary knifework on traditional materials, combining the wild call of the mountains with the desolation and despair of modern life.

Intaglio work and marquetry are other new interests of Chen. His inlaid tables and chairs are carved from whole blocks of wood, and the shapes and patterns of each are different. The labor is time-consuming and the materials hard to find, but Chen insists that this is the only way. "Otherwise, I'd just be a carpenter," he says with a smile.

The inlaid patterns, dozens or scores to a surface, and fitted together from various woods and colors, remind one of exquisite Ching dynasty miniatures in their detail and craftsmanship. His vases, ashtrays, jewelry boxes, brush holders, seal cases, and other utensils fuse the decorative and functional aspects of primitive art, while the animals and people he depicts there seem almost alive, brought to the surface through Chen's art of the knife.

As Chen and I walked back from the beach, he picked up a dry rush by the wayside and said that these once were used to weave mats and hats. I couldn't help thinking: Now that rush has been replaced by polyester, what about primitive carving? Will it die out in the face of glitzy modernistic techniques?

Chen Chiung-hui has worked away quietly now for over a decade. His one-man show which tours the island this spring has finally made people aware of his existence and his accomplishments. But all this is just a beginning. As it says on the invitation card to his exhibition, ". . . What I am striving for will not just be like this."

[Picture Caption]

Chen Chiung-hui here combines aborigine snake and human motifs into a new creation.

Stroke by stroke, Chen Chiung-hui has carved out his own path. (Photo by Ts'ui Yeh-yu.)

Chen's "Reliance".

His "Remembrance". (Photo by Ts'ui Yeh-yu.)

Under Chen Chiung-hui's hand, even a little bolt becomes a masterpiece.

Primitive designs are used in a complicated inlay.

(Above) Chen's workshop and verandah rival each other in beauty. (Photo by Ts'ui Yeh-yu.) (Below) The workshop is distinctively decorated.