"Creatures of Plain Hope -- Sculpture & Installation by Chou Pang-Ling" American Cultural Center April 6 - June 22, 1999

PR9921E | Date: 1999-04-01

The American Cultural Center lobby display cases will showcase the small-scale craft exhibition "Creatures of Plain Hope -- Sculpture & Installation by Chou Pang-ling" from April 6 through June 22, 1999.

The American Cultural Center lobby is open to the public from 9:00 a.m. until 6:00 p.m. Monday through Friday and from noon until 6:00 p.m. on Saturday. It will be closed on Sundays, holidays, and May 8. The American Cultural Center is located at 54 Nan Hai Road, Taipei.

"Creatures of Plain Hope" will be an on-going, time-released process of a mixed-media monument/altar/ceremony that combines elegy, eulogy and lullaby to commemorate and celebrate life. New pieces, including Chou's signature ceramic/multi-media work, as well as unfired clay, shards and pieces, unfinished work and "happenings," will be presented on site each week in order to examine a certain situation, emotion, or dimension in a staged format. Also, a writer will be invited each week to create a poem or a line (using word-shards) to be included in the show in the month of May. Chou hopes that all of her pieces, as well as those done by others, will co-exist peacefully in the glass window, and release their own voices freely. She intends for this to be a good "soul wash," an embrace for a dead mother and her daughter (the creator and leader of the "Creatures of Plain Hope").

Chou Pang-ling has devoted herself to ceramics for more than ten years. She studied in the United States where she received her M. A. degree in drama from the University of Georgia in 1985. Because of her love of ceramics, Ms. Chou then switched to that field for further studies and received an M.F.A. degreee with "distinction" in ceramics in 1987. Since then, Chou has received several international awards and was invited to be an artist-in-residence and lecturer in the United States, Canada, Japan, Korea, and other places.

Growing up in a family that ran a hardware store, Chou came naturally by a love of collecting various kinds of metal parts or objects. She combines these metal materials with her ceramics, and has created an amazing tension and harmony between these two contrasting elements in her works. The raku firing process, which originated in Japan, is one of Chou's favorite media for creating her works of art. The improvisational nature, serenity, beauty and subtlety of raku firing interact perfectly with the metal that Chou uses. Together they create a style/language that is uniquely her own.

With her university background in literature and drama, Chou has given free rein to her vivid imagination and sensitive mind. She tells stories of life and reveals her feelings in three-dimensional forms. Thus, the titles of her works also have a poetic and dramatic feel to them. Chou's artworks are witty, often suggesting the transformation of an object into something human. They are miniatures of a perfectly arranged universe as they disclose the mundane world in a philosophical manner.