Born in Taichung in1970, HUNG Yi was born under the name, HUNG Hong-Yi. He began his professional art career, after graduating from Mingdao High School’s art division. Full of creative vigor, Hung extracts from everyday life’s rich moving colors and dynamic forms. With a different life’s experience as most artists, it is regarded by many that he is an artist of strong natural talent, which is spontaneous and full of original sensitivity. In 2002, by chance, he took part in the residency program at Stock 20, and began to form a connection with the contemporary artistic world. With experiences in important national and international exhibitions and art events, Hung makes paintings and sculptures well-fitted to various public spaces. He is able to bring out the strength of a certain space as if turning stone into gold. His creative vitality is derived from the land, and we are able to witness Taiwan’s unique cultural vigor and its diversely vivid states of life through his art.

The body of this Blue and White Dog is the fusion of traditional folkloric lines, landscapes created with blank spaces, and the artist’s original artistic expressions, resulting in an object that is fascinating and dynamic. The richly diverse Taiwanese culture used as the creative source is ingenuously and boldly applied by the artist to successfully transform into a new object of vibrant and distinctive features.

From the native Taiwanese schemes of colors and shapes, he has not only gained endless inspirations and power but also introduced a new visual plan to the contemporary art community in Taiwan. Having spent extensive times in the everyday setting, Hung holds rich life’s experiences for the everyday society, which have differentiated him from other artists of institutional backgrounds. To him, not only is art closely connected to one’s thoughts and inspirations; more often, it is also an intimate part of life, just like breathing. From this perspective, Hung’s art is realized with such vitality, and has provided Taiwan’s contemporary art world with a new surge of visual style, which not only comes from the folkloric domain but is also derived from the artist’s sensitive worldly instinct.

His artworks are richly “Taiwanese”, and always hold a high level of creative energy and density. On the “celestial island” of Taiwan as he calls it, Hung has created an artistic space-time full of powerful elements like brightness, vividness, joy and ambiguity. In the mean time, his works are testimonies and delineations of his arduous journey of life. His earlier paintings often portrayed reflections and depictions of the reality observed in the society, and also presented the many bizarre, kitsch, and agitated states observed in the realistic life. After 2004, Hung began to develop three-dimensional sculptures of vividly saturated colors. Extending from his previous artistic language, Hung’s artistic style began to shift during this phase in his career, whereby he took Asian cultural icons and abstracted them into unique lines and linear elements, which were incorporated with contemporary art’s experimental quality. This change has undoubtedly opened up a wide artistic path for Hung. His assertive attitude to engage in the world in a well-rounded and harmonious manner is also remarkably expressed. After 2008, the colors and elements in his art were further simplified, with his artistic style even more refined; Blue and White Dog is a representative work of this approach. Hung is like a magician of imageries, and with the transformation of the various symbols on this island, he has created objects of art infused with refreshing innovativeness.