Destroying books to create masterpieces

AHMEDABAD: A Gandhi bust welcomes you inside, a pristine set of Buddha faces look at you from a distance while a huge lord Ganesh bust oversees things from the far end. This is how the exhibition of the legendary Taiwanese book sculptor Long-Bin Chen looks like at the city's art spot, Amdavad ni Gufa.
From a distance, the sculptures could be mistaken for marble or even chiseled wood, but once you stand face to face with any of the pieces, you realize they are thousands of sheaves of paper compacted and worked on with precision.'Cutting Books' as this style is known, had always been prevalent but Chen can easily be called the pioneer of the form. In Ahmedabad since the past month, Chen has created masterpieces out of tons of discarded books, printouts and magazines.
"The martial law period between 1950s and 1980s was a very difficult time in Taiwan, with absolutely no freedom of thought in art," says Chen. "People were brainwashed by authorities and art could have no political connotations. I then shifted to New York and got the biggest culture shock of my life. Gradually, inspiration set in and I self-taught myself this art."
Chen found this inspiration in the cultural debris of our information society when he realized that Taiwan's official institutional books were deliberately deceiving. "The action of destroying books provided an emotional vent while making art became the reconstruction of my cultural self-confidence," he says. Interestingly, the title of every book used is displayed distinctly in each of his works. In the current exhibition, one can see tons of Gujarati titles lining the creations.
Gandhi and Lord Ganesh, the two major icons that inspired Chen for this collection, go on to state what fit in as his muse. His legendary Buddha creations also find space here. "Since colonial times, Europeans and Americans have taken Buddha heads from statues in Asia and brought them to the West," he says. "But Buddha is an important cultural image from Asia. What I have seen is that the Buddha face keeps changing form depending on cultural influences; like facial expressions and hues change from Europe to Asia. I like creating Buddha faces that show this cultural conflict."