Chaong-Wen Ting’s works often deal with fragments from a bygone era. Applying an archaeological approach, he travels into the past along the boundary of fact and fiction, creating novel links with an innate logic.

The background to his exhibition lies in the park of Holzdorf estate near Weimar, where Dr. Otto Krebs gathered an important private art collection from the 1920s onwards. After the Second World War, the Soviets occupied the estate, taking much of the collection with them when they withdrew. Today, almost all of the paintings are in the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, and many of the sculptures that adorned the park have disappeared.

By presenting a statue performatively in the estate’s bathing pond, Ting created a bridge between the site’s unfinished past and its newly extending future. In the exhibition at Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Ting produces a new iteration of his processual work, the story of which he is continuing to develop. He transposes his sculpture from Holzdorf into a multi-layered installation that takes up the original scenario and, in a video piece, creates imaginary points of connection to Constantin Meunier’s The Sower (1896) – a figure from Dr. Krebs’ collection that now stands in front of the Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin.

Chaong-Wen Ting (born in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, in 1979) lives and works in Berlin. In 2006 he completed his studies at Tainan National University of the Arts. His exhibitions include Bauhaus-Museum Weimar (2020), Asian Art Biennial (2019), Fremantle Biennale (2017), Taipei Biennial (2016). In 2020 Ting received the main prize of Taoyuan International Art Award. In 2022 he will be Open Place Artist-in-Residence in Kiev. The artist’s website: tingchaongwen.weebly.com

Chaong-Wen Ting, Jampala, 2021, Videostill, Courtesy the artist (Sound with Andreas Sommer)