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Underhill Chen
LAST UPDATE : 2018.10.24 / EDITOR : curatorcritic
0 artworks / 2 exhibition / 0 essays

Underhill Chen is an independent art critic based in Taipei. His writings on History of Taiwanese Art, with a particular emphasis on the role of artworks and artists in Taiwanese society, can be found in Humanistic Education Journal (column articles), Artist Magazine, and other art magazines.

Chen's research combines document analysis and theoretical reflection to formulate a more adequate explanation for art and its social context. His initial writing was the thesis for MA degree on still-life paintings in Japanese colonial period of Taiwan(1895-1945). In this topic, he discussed how the art education and cultural differences were embodied in things as objects of knowledge and artistic motifs. Later, He started his independent career as an art critic in 2009 and concerned with the state of artistic autonomy in Taiwan's martial law period(1949-1987) in artists such as Li Tsai-Chien, Richard Lin, Hung Tung and Pu Tien-sheng, etc. Instead of general formalism perspective, he wrote these articles on the hypothesis that there is no artistic autonomy in the period and thus frankly included social aspects in his researches.

He also inquires the complex involvement of artists in contemporary Taiwan. Based on case studies, he explores the significance, implication, or political potential in artworks as well as artists' engagement in the paradoxical society, Taiwan, where identities, social movement and art institution were intertwined, for good or bad, to shape artistic creativity or its powerless. Recently, he is trying to incorporate indigenous art and politics in his writing in order to portray the boundaries of modernity which shaped symbolic violence in knowledge, social practice and art creation in a non-state entity. For him, these all propelled him to re-estimated the titular state of artistic autonomy in contemporary Taiwan with a comparison to martial law period, and finally lead to an on-going colonial history in Taiwan.

education
2004
MA Graduate Institute of Art History
National Taiwan University
2000
BFA Department of Fine Arts
Taipei National University of the Arts
...More
CURRICULUM VITAE
2016
Article
"Takahiko Suzuki's Contemporary Topography" and "Holiday in Nuclear Paradise"
Humanistic Education Journal
No. 327 ,P.74-79
2016
Article
Time Splits in the River: A Family Story in Taiwanese Social Movement
Humanistic Education Journal
No. 323 ,P.74-79
2016
Article
I Am the Only One Who Has Escaped to Tell you: Chang En-Man's 'Decriminalization of Taiwanese Indigenous Hunting Rifles' I
Humanistic Education Journal
No. 319 ,P.76-82
2016
Article
I Am the Only One Who Has Escaped to Tell you: Chang En-Man's 'Decriminalization of Taiwanese Indigenous Hunting Rifles' II
Humanistic Education Journal
No. 321 ,P.66-75
2015
Article
The Creative Dynamics of Things
Lin Huang-Ti: The 2015 Exhibits
  ,P.5-9
2015
Article
Suzuki Takahiko’s Contemporary Topography of Betel Nut Stalls
GLOBAL-STORE PROJECT: feat. 2.5D BETEL NUT KIOSK
   
2015
Article
Juisui Kiwit Indigenous Museum: in the Predicament of Administrative Hegemony and Tribal Subjectivity
Humanistic Education Journal
No. 313 ,P.76-82
2015
Article
Disaster and the Banquet of Returning Home: the Self-identity and Cultural symbolism in Chang En-man's Artworks
Artist Magazine
  ,P.178-185
2015
Article
When Anti-Black Box met White Box: Sunflower Movement and the Social Engagement of Taiwanese Artistic movement
Humanistic Education Journal
No. 309 ,P.70-77
2014
Article
The Choice of Pongso No Tao: the Controversy of 7-11 in Orchid's Island and the Memory of Periphery
Humanistic Education Journal
No. 303 ,P.76-83
2014
Article
Museum Collection and Contemporary Taiwanese Audience: Chin Ya-chun and Liu Rung-Lu's 'Me at Liu's Home
Humanistic Education Journal
No. 295 ,P.66-73
2013
Article
The Shattered Coastline: Fan Hsiao-Lan’s The Revolutionary Road
Artist Magazine
  ,P.264-265
2013
Article
Daitian Temple in Hamasen: the Many Worlds of Taiwanese Temples
Humanistic Education Journal
No. 289 ,P.76-83
2013
Article
Plodding between Forced Migration and Disasters: Wanshan Rock Carving and the Fate of the Three Indigenous Communities in Maolin
Humanistic Education Journal
No. 80-88 ,P.285
2012
Article
Formosa in Mirror: Lin Li-chin's Roman Graphique and the Development of Comic in Taiwan
Humanistic Education Journal
No. 281 ,P.70-77
2012
Article
The West under the Len: John Thompson's Journey in the Island of Formosa
Humanistic Education Journal
No. 279 ,P.90-98
2012
Article
Chen Chen-po: the Phantom Journey of Academicism
Humanistic Education Journal
No. 274 ,P.48-54
2012
Article
The Fundational Father of Modern Taiwanese Craft: The Art and Reality in Yen Shui-long's Mosaic Works
Humanistic Education Journal
No. 271 ,P.60-66
2011
Article
After the Falling of Hinoki: Yoga Painter Shiotsuki Toho and Musha Incident
Humanistic Education Journal
No. 269 ,P.70-75
2011
Article
The Price of Art Creation--The Three Political Bronze Statues by Pu Tien-sheng and His National Patrons in the Initial Episode of Post-war Period of Taiwan
The Sculpture Research Semiyearly
No. 5 ,P.1-60
2011
Article
Waiting for Picasso: A Silhouette of Western Art Exhibitions in Post-war Period of Taiwan
Artitude
No. 16  
2010
Article
Old Subject and New Margin: Revisiting the Images of Island in the Development of Taiwanese Art
Artist Magazine
No. 422 ,P.230-235
2010
Article
The Limit of Minimum: The Return of Richard Lin and the Pre-history of Minimalism Art in Taiwan
Artitude
No. 9  
2010
Article
Where is Art? Performance Art in Taiwan in the 1980s
Artist Magazine
No. 419 ,P.136-141
2010
Article
The Contexts from Where the Ready-made Artworks Generated in Taiwan in the 1960s
The Sculpture Research Semiyearly
No. 4 ,P.1-29
2010
Article
Between Pure Art and Applied Art--Li Tsai-Chien's ‘Finite to Infinite’
The Sculpture Research Semiyearly
No. 3 ,P.183-205
2009
Article
The Light and Shadow of Things: The Interplay between Fine Arts and Aboriginal Cultures Exhibition in Colonial Taiwan (1895-1945)
The Construction of Ethnic Group Cultures and its Relative Issues in Taiwan
   
2008
Article
Hung Tung the Bourgeois: the Sudden Sensation of a Conservative Vernacular Painter and His Silent End
in Art Criticism Platform of NCAF
   
2004
Article
The Still-life Paintings in Taiwan Fine Art Exhibition and the Foundation of Modern Life
Master Thesis, National Taiwan University
   
2002
Article
Between Modernization and Nationalism: the Writings of Bai-Yuan Wang(王白淵) and the Birth of Taiwanese Art History
National Graduate Student Symposium of Art Studies 2002
   
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