Born 1975 in Taipei, Taiwan, Tang Jo-Hung currently lives and works in Taipei. He graduated with BA. from Department of Fine Arts, Tunghai University in 1998. In 2002, he received his MFA. from University of Salamanca in Spain (Máster del Arte de la Universidad de Salamanca), and was granted the prestigious Premio San Marco premiere award in the same year. He received the first prize at the 22nd Kaohsiung Awards in 2005, Liao Chi-Chun Oil Painting Award in 2008, and the First Prize of Taipei Arts Awards in 2016. Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts held a solo exhibition for Tang in 2018, and Taipei Fine Arts Museum is to host Tang’s solo exhibition Old Man·Fairy·And A Bit Of Everything in 2019. For the 2023 Taishin Arts Award, a total of 17 candidates and their artworks have been shortlisted among the 115 participants. The panelists eventually selected “Tang Jo-Hung: As You Sleep Worry-Free – From Pandemic to War: About disaster crisis like a celebration in one or two different cook methods” for the 21st Grand Prize Winner. This is also the first time a two-dimensional artwork has won the grand prize at the award.
For Tang, art creation is a process of the symbiosis between the self and the counterpart. It is as if a soul and its double are both looking for a body that it could rest in. The canvas and paints provide the painter the fertile soil to cultivate his artistic seeds in his minds and daily rituals. With his eyes that are sometimes as sharp as those of an eagle and sometimes as innocent as those of a child, the painter watches his painting grow in his hands, allowing him and the self to acquaint amidst the emotional responses and rational judgment. After a magical and eventful journey, voila the spontaneous encounter. If you have a chance to touch his canvas, a fiber board that are smooth on both sides but seem to also have small air breathers, you would know why they can present the elongated lines and vibrating strokes of the painter’s brush to such perfection. The painter can extend, swirl, wrinkle, rub, scrape, and smear the paint on the canvas freely. Whenever he is out for his artistic journeys, these painting skills are his "ge-shi"(Note3) to document his emotions in the time of hunger or satisfaction, and in the time of ecstasy and distress. However, viewers must not interpret the paintings of these journeys as travelogues and rush to sift out the translucent messages. If you cannot imagine a journey with the painter while viewing, you see nothing.
- excerpt from Where has he been? Looking at the Self from an “It” Perspective: On Tang Jo-Hung’s Painting by Lin Ping