Mind Set Art Center is honored to present Tang Jo-Hung's fifth solo exhibition, “Treasure Island”. This marks the artist's first major new body of work since winning the 21st Taishin Arts Award Grand Prize in 2023 for his previous solo, “As Your Sleep Worry-Free”. This new exhibition features nearly 30 artworks created over the past three years, including his signature oil paintings and a new series of clay sculptures. The exhibition is scheduled to run from October 4 through November 22, 2025, with an artist-led tour on the opening day, Saturday, October 4, at 3:30 PM, followed by a reception at 4:00 PM. We extend a warm invitation to all of you.
Tang Jo-Hung's paintings, beyond their spontaneity, are deeply infused with his reflection on daily experiences and thoughts on life amid changing times. “Treasure Island” represents a continuation of Tang’s ongoing examination of Taiwan’s existential condition, a process initiated three years ago in his prior exhibition, “As You Sleep Worry-Free”, using allegories and implicit language to hint at the intertwined narratives on this land. Inspired by the tales of treasure hunting and conflicts in Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic novel, Tang’s new works draw parallels between the fictional island and the island of Taiwan, which stands at a precarious position in the current global landscape: an island rich in resources yet caught in historical and geopolitical tensions, pulled among external forces and their constructed narratives. The element of “island” has thus become an important motif in Tang’s new paintings. In the titular work, “Treasure Island”, the artist depicts a young man wearing a Western-style hat rowing a boat. He is seen half-naked with an uneasy expression, likely due to the nun-like figure towering over him, sternly urging him forward. Against a backdrop of fiery red skies and dark green hills, the scene emphasizes a sense of entrapment and powerlessness, as though the man is surrounded on all sides by impending crisis.
In several works, Tang Jo-Hung portrays the island's powerlessness amid the pulls of external forces. In “Lone Sail”, Tang depicts a sailor pulling an invisible rope to control a sailboat in a storm. Opposite to him in the frame is a looming giant suspending in midair, silent yet imposing, as if dictating his every move. In “Treasure Island: she is bad”, the artist creates a Sphinx-like figure: a brawny male body with the head of a long-necked tyrannical woman, one of its many hands grips a sword, summoning a war with conspicuous aggression. In the opposite woods, two overlapping stranded boats are rendered with layered brushstrokes. At once, it becomes unclear as to who controls the boats, or who commands this disjointed body.
Tang Jo-Hung also transforms his reflections on external struggles into introspection about his own circumstances. In “The Painter and the End”, the artist depicts a painter kneeling beside an electrical coil, clutching a brush. In this self-referential work, lightning symbolizes the fleeting nature of inspiration, while the deep red atmosphere — charged with thunder and storm — hints at the threats haunting the painter’s mind: war, death, creative exhaustion, and the fear of fading talent. These forces, ever-present and invisible, bind him in place, leaving him paralyzed.
In stark contrast, the diptych “Bad Cat” presents rich symbolism: a large cat filled with sharp, geometric lines dominates the center, clutching a blue bird in its mouth — echoing the other dead bird on the ground, evoking an aura of impending mortality. The backdrop of towering twin peaks and a crimson, misty sky heightens the scene’s eerie tension. In the bottom portion of the painting, the artist adds a stream-of-consciousness text, creatively blurring the boundaries between pictorial and literal language. In his recent sculptural works, Tang further blurs the line between painting and sculpture, materializing the dynamic brushstrokes of boots and fruit from his canvases, extending them into the three-dimensional realm.
Through his external observations and inward reflections, Tang Jo-Hung dissolves the familiar limits of media, transcending traditional definitions of painting. Perhaps, as hinted in his writing: “Close your eyes, live your life, and walk into the forest.”, the artist tries to express his aspiration for both himself and Taiwan: to break free from external forces and existing narratives, step into the primal forest, and embrace the endless possibilities rooted in that unknown chaos.
