What's going on around the globe When Peng Hung-chih set out to become an artist in the late 1990s, he probably didn't imagine he'd ever be 'painting' with a dog's tongue. The video installation artist trained as a painter, but dropped it out of boredom. 'There are more possibilities in installation,' says Peng. 'Painting has been developed for centuries. There are fewer possibilities to do something different. There's so much new material to use now.' In 2000, Peng created two suits to put on his pet dog. The photo series is titled One Dalmatian (2000) and One Lassie (2000). At first glance, it's obvious that the subject is a dog. But move closer and you start to notice something's not quite right. Since when have the spots on a Dalmatian been so uniform and evenly scattered? The tail and paws of the real dog under the outfit give it away. The next year, Peng produced five more pieces centred on the dog theme. In Feeding Dogs With My Face (2001), he fixes cameras to the heads of three of his dogs, then dons his own dog suit, lies on his kitchen floor and smears dog food on his face. We watch from the dogs' perspective as they feed from their master's face. In the less messy Little Danny (2001), Peng builds an enormous dog from 660 little plastic dog toys (below). Sensors trigger them to yelp simultaneously. Peng says it's his 'means to represent Taiwan's identity. By using many dogs, the individual voices can be heard. Not many people know about Taiwan'. Peng's next piece, Face to Face (2001), shows it's not all about fur and paws. The installation displays five fibreglass dogs, each with a video showing inside their mouth or head. To view it, you have to stick your head inside one dog's mouth or sit on another while peering into the hole in the back of its head. Pretty soon Peng has you moving around like a dog. For the next three years, Peng stayed loyal to his dog theme, creating the Canine Monk, a four-part series (2004-2006). In Qingjing Jing (2004), his pet dog walks quickly up to a plain wall. Before we realise it, the dog has 'painted' a quote from Lao Tzu with his tongue: 'The great Tao has no form; It brings forth and raises Heaven and Earth.' Next came The Heart Sutra (2005), the dog now painting the Buddhist sutra in Sanskrit. 'The concept has three layers,' Peng says. 'God, the human and the dog. I started with the word 'dog'. Spelt backwards, 'dog' becomes 'God'. The next step was to show religious scriptures released by a dog. It's a hierarchical twist, from dog to God. When you look up you see God; when you look down you see dogs.' In Excerpts From the Holy Bible (2006), the dog paints biblical quotes about war and bloodshed. Closing the series, Excerpts From the Holy Bible in Arabic Translations (2006) has Peng's dog painting anti-violence quotes in Arabic. The paint is made from dog food. The works are part of Beyond Beijing, an exhibition at Osage contemporary art space in Kwun Tong until January 26.
