Jang Tarng Kuh's paintbrush is a spotlight, casting on the nature creature, the veins of earth and sand and the trace of their living. While the twigs of plants are always precisely captured, the waves of leaves in the wind between the lights shining tremendous layers of subtle colors start telling a story. A drama which goes up and down with mysteries then starts. The real roles hidden in the silence are waiting for the exact moment of appearance. In the deep shadow of green under the obscure atmosphere and in the fruitfulness covered by twigs of plants, we find that beauty accompanies sadness and happiness binds danger. In artist’s works we are amazed that silence is far more boisterous than you imagined, the Zen-like wisdom has been hidden from the thriving wildness.

Like Cezanne’s choice to Province, Gauguin’s eagerness to Tahiti, Tarng-Kuh Jang after lingering in Yangming Mountain for twenty years, chooses to go on his life in Yilan. His perspectives in those works are closer, to the ground or to the branches, that it is as if he gives a thorough microcosm of nature. And he does it from a most intimate yet the most humble position, so that he presents to his audience a theater of life surrounding his residence. His courtyard is precisely a theater of the reality with wild lives like Calla Lilies, cobwebs, green bamboo vipers, Taiwan blue magpies, white-breasted water hens, and so on, becoming beautiful characters. Nocturne portrays the twirling Calla Lily leaf with the glowing texture of the wide and moisture, the green leaves like waves show its veins and delicate lines. A snail is crawling in the dark while the Collared Scops Owl is curiously standing. However, no one can escape from its poisonous. The Game at Dawn casts a cat and a spiderweb. one is fixing its eyes on the prey and the other is awaiting its own. And their half hidden positions are portrayed in contrast with the birds that do not seem to realize the danger upon them. This chase, not yet triggered but foreseeable, could be a game, but it may very well end up being a gory feast. Fruitful bananas are dancing ballet in the gluttonous birds' eyes, the fruitfulness is the only exist in their world. A squirrel is looking at bananas with the similar greed in the pleasant sunshine, shown in Discovery. A disguised cat by a leave is casting “Predator” with its greedy eyes on the target; in the meantime, a green lizard is also busy at aiming a kirsches. we have witnessed an inevitable but astounding play of Nature Select, surprises and lament happened in various events of lives roll after one another. All are playing on the roadside and framed on the peaceful paintings. The artist ‘s captures of still moments in fact magnify the tension of vitality. Therefore within an intriguing distance we see the flow of life and time, interactions between roles, the story keep playing. In his roadside theater, the rational universe from another angle could be full of ridiculousness and abruption.

The lights and shadows are arranged on the painting like the casting flow on a stage. they are not only casting on the main actors, but lively mise-en-scene is also carefully captured in every corner. Movement and stillness, light and darkness, all are extended from the main character to expose the hidden space of multiple layers as well as focal points. There is no particular element but the whole creates special visual impression. Viewers are amazed at the obscure and realistic atmosphere, but soon fall into Jang's dialectics of life. Green—a lot of green, Jang elevates the most ordinary, homey plant to nature’s messenger on stage. But even the green changes. It is moist and watery; it is the sort of green that was thick, greasy and misty, with a dense film of steam. That green also came with a hint of an unsettled mind, as if there is an indefinite blue in this green. But Jang’s green has the change of light and the shift of time to show. Another thing is even visible: the steam released from the body under the sun. However, when the green shines of menace and hidden perils, Jang’s incredible realist techniques portray the plant more than simply represent them; we find an unreal aura along with Jang’s realism, expressing an allegory theater of nature in his mimesis. The Parade at Dawn displays the most layers of green freely at dawn, a sea of cabbages waking up like blossoms, the light rolling dewdrops and ethereal flying butterflies; in the dreamily floating mist, we are stunned by the imposing manner and spirit shown by a large number of mounted and foot soldiers. You have not joined the counting of this cabbage troop but already let yourself applaud for the grandness of softness. The emotion gives you a timely warning: is the utopia a dream or does it actually exist on the insignificant roadside? Take Between Real and Dream for instance. See through the texture of the layered, half-transparent light green screen window with an indistinct aura in which time and space are overlaid, the path to the far side perhaps leads to the childhood, a time where we needed not worry how the civilization might corrupt us that we should begin to resist; or the path that guides your life like the boulevard of philosophy, always awaiting your visit. The contemplation of life and its realness is best presented in Jang’s Flowers Blossom and Fall. In the lotus pond that occupies the entire canvas, there are lotus buds, lotuses in furious blossom, seedpods as well as the withered ones, all in one pond just like life in a flash. It's a dance of life as well as an aria of death performed on the freeze frame of green. The aquatic bird taking a walk between the lotus leaves and the pond like a guest stopping by seems careless of the rules of life. It depicts that life is like everything in one pond but we always cannot care it in time.

Jang uses dramatic performance and his exquisiteness in any angle to amaze us with his realistic strengthens and richness in his paintings. We are even affected by the splendid of Vanity Fair. We total experience the exceeding and freedom what Gustave Courbet, the French realistic artist, once said, “Show me an angel and I will paint one.” However, the difference is that Jang takes the freedom and exceeding into a theater. There is never an end of the theater of life because we discover truthful and great stories, one act after another. It's like human beings' desires, anger, ignorance, and arrogance, which are always alike but have no end; moreover, audiences never get bored.

Jang re-directors time and spaces as he pleases with the enriched acting flow and scripts. Therefore, Roadside Theater is the theater of nature portraying all the thriving lives; it is also a theater nostalgic of utopia; and it's even a theater of the jungle law. On the stage, plots vary from minute to minute; on the stage, mysteries are hidden everywhere. This is the script of reality, and welcome you anytime to Jang Tarng Kuh’s Roadside Theater!

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A good drama never ends
Special Activities for Roadside Theater Begin~~

The first-round activity: Give you Jang's special postcards
Duration Time: 2014/04/06 - 2014/04/19 ＊20 sets of Jang's postcards

The second-round activity : Give you Jang's album of paintings with his own autograph
Duration Time: 2014/04/19 ＊50 copies of Jang's painting albums

The third-round activity : Give you a chance of creating your own Roadside Theater
Duration Time: 2014/04/19 ~ 05/18 ＊Afternoon-tea with Jang

For more information, please see: