Born in Taipei, Taiwan in 1976, SU Hui-Yu received his Bachelor’s degree from the Department of Fine Arts at National Taiwan Normal University in 1998 and received his Master’s degree from the Department of Fine Arts at Taipei National University of the Arts. Since 2002, his artistic practice has been closely related to mass media, TV, commercial culture, and image productions on a daily basis. His works have been shown in exhibitions around Taipei, Beijing, New York, Berlin, Paris, Madrid, Los Angeles, Seoul, and many other cities. His solo exhibitions The Fabled Shoots in 2007 and Stilnox Home Video in 2010 were both nominated for Taishin Arts Awards for Visual Arts. 

Describing himself as a child growing up with television, SU responded to the reading of images, the choice of language, and the cognitive thinking in a society dominated by media in his works between 2004 and 2007. His artistic concept thus echoed the aesthetic expressions developed in contemporary society. In 2004-2005, he appropriated the ridiculous repetition and the commercialized emotional outburst in soap operas in his Endless Calling. Bad in 2005 and Dance in 2006 both touch upon how MV influences the life of teenagers and how they form their identity. In Everything, we see texts and images similar to news ticker or trailers, through which the artist talks about the sense of speed, the fragmentized and simplified data, the visual excitement, and the brainwashing information bombardment on TV. The Fabled Shoots in 2007 adopts the vocabulary of the crime movie genre to play with the visual intrigue. The representation of genre movies/series not only satisfies the artist’s desire in its reflection but also unveils the paradoxical virtual reality constructed by contemporary media. 

The artistic concept of Stilnox Home Video originated from the artist’s experience of taking Stilnox, a kind of sleeping pill. After taking the pill, the artist found himself in a limbo, half sober and half confused. It was a weird experience, visually and physically, for that the artist was in a trance where illusion and reality existed together. It is very similar to our experiences of speed and space which are extremely expanded and extremely compressed in an age of media. It turns out that our lives are surrounded by ambiguous events and images. Does the image copy the reality, or does the reality copy the image? The answer is no longer there. The illusional physical experience is what the artist wants to reveal in Stilnox Home Video. 

Taiwan’s mass media and cable television has flourished since the lifting of Martial Law. Cable television was legalized with the enactment of Cable Broadcasting and Television Act in 1993, while the number of non-government broadcasting channels increased up to over 100. Media becomes more accessible, influencing our visual perception and ways of thinking through these diverse information-intensive channels. 

SU Hui-Yu’s artistic practice can be traced back to his childhood. Growing up with television, the experience of “watching TV” becomes a major visual element in his artworks. Most of his early artworks truthfully present his status as a receiver. Gradually, the artist gets involved in the process of producing visual fantasy in our reality. From television to the digital media we cannot live without, from Facebook to portable 3C products, our perception has already logged in the wireless cyberspace of contemporary media and it will never log off. According to the artist, the media reflects our subconsciousness and desire. It has been blended in our real bodies. It is unavoidable that we become the products and the producers of the media.