WANG Jun-Jieh was born in Taipei in 1963. He graduated from the Fine Arts Department, Chinese Culture University in 1989 and pursued further studies at Berlin University of Art in the same year. Not even six months later, he witnessed the fall of the Berlin Wall, a historical event that brought Eat and West Germany together. He obtained a master’s degree in visual art in 1995 and a certificate from the school’s master class in 1996, the highest possible degree. Wang was awarded the 9th Lion Art New Artist Award in 1984. He was listed among “The 100 Most Noticed Artists” by Bijutsu Shuppan, a famous fine arts magazine in Japan, in 2000. Wang received the 7th Taishin Arts Award in 2009. An artist, curator and critic, WANG Jun-Jieh is not only a pioneer of video and new media art in Taiwan, but also a major promoter. He used to teach in the Department of Art, National Changhua University of Education. He presently holds a teaching position in the Department of New Media Art, Taipei National University of the Arts.

Eternal rejuvenation seems to be a collective desire of all human races, whichhas been observed from time to time paying almost anything for the matter. In Wang’s works, HB-1750 is the imaginary narcotic that brings back one’s younger self after taking it. Such arrangement is for sure artistically surreal, yet implying how both life and desire become commodity within modern consumeristic society. The boundary between imagination and reality appear to be so undetermined, as information rapidly interflowing among the massive networks. One can only figure what is illusion, and what is reality from the flow of symbols, and the so-called “world of authenticity” has been lost ever since.

WANG Jun-Jieh is devoted to exploring the dialectical relationship between reality and virtuality. He sees that in a digitalized world, information, commodities and human desires will rush about in different parts of the globe at a speed beyond imagination. How will humanity change under such circumstances? Wang offers rather pessimistic suggestions. In fact, the artist already criticized certain political ideologies in his early works. Having witnessed the reunification of the East and the West Germany, he has also discussed the dominance of capitalism and market over human desires through art. He believes that the human body and human needs, in a contemporary society, will eventually have to be constructed by mainstream political and economic forces. Youth and many other desirable matters can all be shaped into materialized symbols by the desiring machines, too.

Since 2000, however, Wang has changed from focusing on consumption and desire to taking a greater view on the mechanism of human existence. The Microbiology Association series, which the artist still continues to work on today, reflects his imagination of a bleak future. According to this series, damage of the world’s ecological systems will worsen, and important parts of the globe, such as oceans, will no longer exist but in memories. Mankind will have to conduct more systematic researches in order to survive. Also, in a world overwhelmed by technology and information, bipolar disorder and chronic syndromes will become the new incurable diseases. By then, human beings will be moving about in different cities as if they were living deaths. On a giant human pasture, body and soul will be destined to separate from one another, and humans shall all become machines of production itself and desire’s reproduction. WANG Jun-Jieh’s artworks turn the myriad syndromes deriving from highly developed capitalism, as well as the aesthetic criticism against these syndromes, into objects of representation in his technology-assisted art. Over the last years, he has attempted to make art that crosses more disciplines. He has worked with professionals in music, theatre and design to build a more diverse new media art landscape. Such attempts indicate the coming of a cross-disciplinary era of contemporary Taiwanese art.