SHIH Yung Chun: Forbidden Love: SOLO EXHIBITION

Forbidden Love, which marks SHIH Yung Chun’s first solo presentation in Korea, presents his latest body of works that revolve around seven distinct settings—a hotel room and hallway, a living room, kitchen, bar, stage, and road—where mysterious, fictional incidents take place. Through SHIH’s unique imagination, these fantastically staged scenes interweave to create an expansive and immersive world rooted in the exhibition space itself. The exhibition title, Forbidden Love, metaphorically refers to the unfamiliar relationships formed among objects originating from disparate times and environments as they coexist on a single stage. At the same time, it reveals the irony of “forbidden” emotions—such as betrayal, rivalry, desire, and despair—that lie dormant within the bonds portrayed across the seven scenes, including maternal care, romantic affection between lovers, friendship, and the pursuit of one’s passion.

Growing up in a village near a military base during Taiwan’s period of economic revitalization, SHIH developed a deep sensitivity to the transient value of things quickly discarded and replaced amid rapid societal changes. His practice often begins with imagery drawn from 1980s product packaging, newspapers, and magazines—materials that recall the decade of his childhood. The toys that frequently appear in his recent works not only evoke his personal memories but also bear subtle traces of the times and places from which they originated. By intertwining these traces into intricate networks of relationships, SHIH endlessly expands the narrative universe of his practice. SHIH’s Toy Set (2025) series consists of three-dimensional works reminiscent of puppet-theater stages, presented mostly in tabletop-sized dioramas. The seven distinct stages depict different settings, from which scenes are excerpted and reimagined as propaganda-style paintings and time-based cinematic animations. The 24 dolls placed within the miniature stages serve as characters who carry the narrative forward, repeatedly reappearing across media in different variations. By placing articulated dolls within miniature, three-dimensional stages, SHIH reconfigures the grand narratives of sociocultural reality within his own microcosmic universe. Through this process, the static past is revived as a dynamic and fictionalized history. Rather than presenting a single, linear storyline, SHIH invites viewers to interpret his works from multiple perspectives, encouraging layered reflections on their underlying themes.

SHIH was born in 1978 in Taiwan and received his BFA in Western Painting from the National Taiwan University of Arts in 2003. He has held numerous solo exhibitions across China, Taiwan, and Korea, and has participated in group exhibitions held in notable institutions including White Rabbit Gallery (Sydney, Australia, 2025; 2024), Heide Museum of Modern Art (Melbourne, Australia, 2024), Taitung Art Museum (Taitung, Taiwan, 2023), Long Museum West Bund (Shanghai, China, 2022), New Taipei City Art Center (New Taipei, Taiwan, 2020), and Today Art Museum (Beijing, China, 2012), among others. He received the Taikai Prize at Geisai Taiwan #3 (2011) and Geisai Taiwan #1 (2009). His works are included in the collections of the White Rabbit Gallery (Australia), Long Museum (China), National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts (Taiwan), Art Bank (Taiwan), and the National Museum of History (Taiwan).