Person
Artist
J.C. Kuo
郭振昌
Date of birth
1949
Place Of birth
Lukang, Taiwan, Asia
Biography
J.C. Kuo was born in 1949 in Lukang Township and is regarded as part of the first generation of modern Taiwanese artists. As a student under the influential modern painter Lee Chun-shan (李仲生), he developed an interest in abstract art and Freudian psychoanalytic theory. Since that time Kuo developed an idiosyncratic style that draws extensively on Taiwanese popular culture and religion, elements that are still strongly in evidence in his work. Although he uses a wide variety of motifs taken from traditions like the Eight Generals formation (the wardens of hell in Taiwanese folk tradition), Daoist iconography and Chinese calligraphy, Kuo is unequivocal about the fact that he is an artist in the Western tradition. Sponsored by Asia Foundation, USA during 1974-79, he devoted himself to researching Taiwanese folk art and participated in practical fieldwork. Influenced by Pop Art in the 1970s, he formed a unique personal creative style in the 80’s – juxtaposing Han and Tang figures and totems or symbols of Chinese traditional arts with his strong western pictorial vocabulary. In the 1990s he expanded to include the subject of landscape and imagery drawn from Chinese classical fairy tales. Kuo’s work has been exhibited in solo and group shows internationally.
