Diamond – Superman 2013 Painting

Born in 1969, Taiwanese artist Keng Hao Kang currently lives in Taipei. Graduated from the department of Fine Arts of Tunghai University in 1993, Keng pursued further studies from 1997 to 2002 in Accademia di belle arti di Brera in Milan, Italy. Under the instruction of Professor Diego Esposito, Keng majored in painting and installation. His ideas and passion about Conceptual Art was inspired then. After he came back to Taiwan, Keng worked several years for the German fashion brand Hugo Boss. His background influences his artwork and made his style outstanding. People often said that Keng Hao Kang is an elusive person with unconstrained style. Keng's ideas for art are always unfathomable and unlimited by neither the theme nor the media. He is good at mixing genres between Alternative and Pop; in other words, he makes great use of crossover. There is a unique visual effect in his works on object images, which reminds us of the advertisement in magazines, promotional head portraits, and low-cost commercial films of the 70s. Even though the colors used in his artworks are not plenty, but they are still saturated, bright, and delicate. He processed original ready-mades by digital techniques and studio shot. His use of deconstruction and separation between the background and the concept of the image is to let the audience extend their perspectives on the works. For over twenty years, Keng put his efforts in expanding the ideas of painting and the interpretation of objects. This shows Keng's huge interest in abstract concepts and in the development of self-reflection. Although Keng does not talk much about art, we can feel the outburst power of experimenting in his works. Using the artworks, Keng expands the possibilities of contemporary arts. His constant change on styles and methods shows that he does not want art to be a fixed pattern. Further, he doesn't want to see the fact that some types of art are used as the standard to view other arts. In other words, there should be no criterion in judging art as "out-of-fashion" or "contemporary." We could thus understand the reason why he used photography rather than painting in some of his works: not to replace the function but to discover and expand other ways of human experiences. In this way, he redefined the relation between reality and art. Viewers could get the "fun" feeling of daily life from Keng's works.