Unknown Mouse

作品賞析

CHANG Teng-Yuan is skilled in deriving artistic inspiration from everyday objects, using painting, comic, and animation devices to reflect upon our visual experiences in modern life. The work Unknown Mouse is set several thousand years after the end of the world. A humanoid parrot has managed to track down Earth to conduct archaeological studies after receiving a message broadcasted from the planet. Against a uniform purple background, two humanoid parrots are shown focusing upon the unearthing of a newly discovered archaeological artifact in the form of a classical character created by the Japanese artist Takashi Murakami, while another humanoid parrot compares it against Walt Disney’s Mickey Mouse for comparison in order to ascertain its identity. To CHANG Teng-Yuan, a parrot is only capable of mimicking our actions, and so has copied our actions and behavior as a means of studying the Earth’s civilization. This has led to erroneous judgment of objects that they cannot understand. When creating this artwork, CHANG Teng-Yuan has thought of an end-of-the-world scenario and attempted to introduce various symbols and systems in order to ponder about the possibility of such a scenario. CHANG Teng-Yuan hopes that this work would renew people’s attention to things that they have often neglected or callously tossed aside, and highlight the confusion that characterize this day and age.