Photo by Lien Szu Po / EGG

ZHEN-YOU HUNG

(b. 1992, Taiwan)

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Zhen-You Hung, currently based in Shanghai and Taipei, continues to explore the profound relationship between the body, perception, and life energy through painting, sculpture, and exhibition planning. In recent years, he has centered his practice on the concept of “breath,” distilled from his self-awareness during the pandemic era and his reflections on collective connection. Drawing nourishment from the experiences and realizations accumulated throughout different stages of life, he repeatedly revisits and reflects upon them, allowing them to develop into an ongoing body of work. His artistic trajectory has gradually shifted from early photorealism toward semi-abstraction, attempting to give concrete form to the organic landscapes of the private realm while probing how the body, as a subject of perception, interacts with both inner and outer worlds to establish a renewed mode of dialogue.

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In his creative process, Hung invests deeply in the energy drawn from lived experience. His earlier series, Scent, for instance, records events he encountered during his alternative military service in a fire department, using sketch-like gestures to swiftly capture each emotional tremor.

These moments, when re-engaged through painting, in turn intervene in the artist’s own sense of self. Through this reciprocal process, they gradually gave rise to the central vocabulary of his recent work “breath.” This concept extends outward like mycelium, branching into the subtheme of Tactility, and will continue to weave an increasingly dense network of perception in his future practice.

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Using a de-formalized mode of expression as his medium, Hung’s work achieves a balance between low-saturation color and intense energy, chaos and order, the visible and the invisible, the physical and the spiritual. In doing so, he articulates perception as a bridge connecting life and space. Within his works, inhalation and exhalation are not only ties between the individual and space, but also keys to sensing the self and exploring existence. Through this body of work, he hopes to guide viewers toward an inner meditative field, and through the experience of “being,” to re-examine the boundaries between perception and the world.

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Zhen-You Hung is committed to exploring the structures and modes of interaction within contemporary society, with a focus on themes such as social language, meditation, mysticism, and positive psychology. His works approach racial interests and the future of humanity from an affirmative perspective, while also probing resonances within human nature and the spirit. By combining figuration and abstraction, and through the interplay of acrylic, oil paint, and charcoal, he interprets the relationship between light and the flow of vital energy in painting. While extending the twentieth-century discourse on the integration of Eastern and Western thought, he opens up a new contemporary vision of perception, connecting personal experience and collective concerns in a way that is both warm and profound.​​​