Born in Taipei, Taiwan in 1975, HUANG Shih-Chieh moved to the United States soon after he finished primary education in Taiwan. He acquired a bachelor’s degree in fine art from the University of California, San Diego in 1998, and completed an MFA program in the School of Visual Arts in New York in 2001. Huang is extremely active in the international fine arts community. He has participated in group exhibitions held in Spain, USA, Germany and China, and held a solo exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei in 2003. The artist has also attended the Venice Biennale on behalf of Taiwan, and exhibited his work at the Busan Biennale in South Korea and Biennale Cuvee in Linz, Austria. 

Huang dissembles discarded objects and easily accessible everyday objects like plastic bags, food containers, plastic bottles and lamps to make organic installations. Most of such creations are based on the curious artist’s explorations of life. He is eager to learn the workings of the world, and his artworks often represent an experimental exchange among objects, space and people. At the same time, Huang tries to understand how art may facilitate the exchange between two different objects or persons. The artist’s works wipe off the boundary between powered installations and new media art, and exhibit a friendly, inspiring kind of fun. 

HUANG Shih-Chieh’s works are a combination of science and biology. His installations, composed of everyday objects, mechanical gadgets, LED lights and plastic bags, transform the ordinary into the miraculous, and demonstrate the strength of life. The artist especially emphasizes plastic bags in his works, as they are encompassing and full of energy to him. He likes to make the bags move like the parts of a breathing organism. For instance, in this artwork, the longish bags dance closely along, as if they were the arms and legs of a bionic being. 

Art-making to the artist is like manufacturing and playing toys, and the creative process resembles an experiment or a game. In the exhibition room is a film that explains HUANG Shih-Chieh’s creative concepts and his thoughts on the making of art. He has tried to transform human eyes into TV sensors that can sense the change of day and night. He has also put fluorescent paint into plastic tubes to make a mesmerizing interactive device featuring flowing colors. Such are his fun approaches to art. 

More electric and mechanical devices are changing our ways to perceive along with technological advancement. As portable high-tech gadgets become common place, our senses also tend to function in a way for us and machines to become one. In a world where technology constantly evolves, however, more objects are being discarded and our senses replaced by techs. Is technology forcing us to regress? 

The aforementioned is what Huang wants to ask. He tries to redefine the relation among technology, living beings and discarded objects, and manually brings them together to formulate a constructive, ongoing state for his art. “Relation” and “interaction” are the keys to his works. By re-using discarded / second-hand objects, which we often put aside in everyday life, the artist brings the broken and the alienated back to work in an organic system. Such makes his interactive installations meaningful.