What’s ahead?

About the work
As to sculpture, the concrete figure of human body is always one of the important theme. Different from the past, this four-faced giant statue which constructed of iron and steel elements had no clear facial features and muscle outlines. It formed the body image by using the steel waste which was about to be thrown into melting pots. Besides, this statue interwove civil urban store trademarks and different kinds of labels within.
During the Renaissance, human body was often explained and compared with the universe and nature-the skeleton, flesh and blood of human body as the structure and systems of the universe; the breathing and pulse beats as the growth, decline and pulsation of the earth. In this work, Po-Chun LIU formed the epitome of city body by using the image of human body. He used materials full of characters of the industrial times to communicate with the image of human body. The iron and steel elements as various kinds of curved or even spiral iron rods, dish-shaped components, twist tube materials etc., built up and welded the work’s figure as human body by means of Chinese medicine bronze acupuncture figure to paralleled the image of acupuncture points and meridians of the city.
Looking back the development of human body statuary, we can see the human images have been reinterpreted over and over again. Nowadays, strong physique and heroic character of city body well and truly reconstructed the idol personality of consumption civilization and industrial systems in the society. However, as the point of view of archacology, the meaning of this concrete interpretation is far beyond the reconstruction of the real world, and further, it’s about the historical imagination of archaeological relics hundreds of years later. ( By Wen-Ying SHE )
Quoted from: Shi Zhe, What’s Ahead? Contemporary Sculpture of Taiwan in Post-Expansion Era FORMOSA Sculpture Biennial 2013, Kaohsiung: Bureau of Cultural Affairs, Kaohsiung City Government, 2013, p. 103