Shopping Oddity | Yang Bo-Yao

For the first exhibition after the Chinese New Year holiday in 2017, Yu-Hsiu Museum of Art has invited four promising contemporary artists of realist art from different fields to hold four respective exhibitions. The attempt corresponds to one of the museum's long-term objectives, which is to "strive for increasing the visibility of Taiwanese contemporary realist art." We also hope that the artistic warmth of the works would capture the attention of international and domestic art lovers and lead our audience to care about the contemporary environment and society.

At the first sight of Yang Bo-Yao's painting, one cannot help but smiling at his design of the image. However, taking a closer look at his work and learning about the real social events behind his sarcastic representation, one realizes that he sincerely hopes to remind his audience to pay more attention to the issues of food from its production to our consumption of food on the table. These issues include genetically engineered food, canned food, food safety, etc. Therefore, in his solo exhibition, Shopping Oddity, he continues to employ the fictional character, "Lego Bee Man," which is viewed as his alter ego, to depict a laboring life in a tomato garden. Through this metaphor, he portrays the labor class in modern society. In his work, the morphed artist endeavors to remind the public to be aware of the source of food while pursuing all the little happiness of eating in the changeless daily life and not to unknowingly allow merchants to endanger our health and life.