Chin Tsao

STAGE Bregenz 2025, Bregenz

  • 20.03.–23.03.2025

STAGE Bregenz 2025
TENSIONS, curated by Hana Ostan-Ožbolt-Haas
Booth A6

Galerie Martin Janda is showing Chin Tsao at STAGE Bregenz 2025 in the section TENSIONS, curated by Hana Ostan-Ožbolt-Haas.

Chin Tsao’s practice embraces a sense of chaos and kitsch, weaving across historical eras while merging Eastern and Western aesthetic forms. Spanning video, music, performance, and mixed-media sculpture—often incorporating ceramics and porcelain—their work responds to the unpredictable nature of our contemporary world, navigating themes ranging from the queer body to the exploitative dynamics of the global economic system as well as humanity’s anxieties and alienation relating to speculative futures. By deliberately engaging with mediums steeped in historical legacy, Tsao’s practice navigates the encounter between Asian and European cultures, the evolving aesthetics of Eastern and Western craft traditions, and the layered historical contexts embedded within the medium. Simultaneously, it reflects the hybridization of styles shaped by globalization. (After the exhibition text by Meiya Cheng; Chin Tsao: hustle, hustle at Galerie Martin Janda (2023))

The monumental ceramic work ON HOLD (2025), exhibited for the first time at STAGE Bregenz, is part of Tsao’s ongoing project The Land of Promise 4: Soil Oil Soul. Developed since 2023 across Vienna, Linz, Budapest, and Amsterdam, the project investigates the impact of digital culture, the persistence of Orientalist tropes in cyberpunk, and the lingering effects of generational trauma. Within this framework, ON HOLD embodies “The Mountain”, one of the project’s four central themes. The sculpture takes on a statue-like presence – decayed, human-like existence, deformed and entangled in its own tainted remains.

Festspielhaus, Platz der Wiener Symphoniker 1
6900 Bregenz

Preview: 20th March 2025
Public Days: 21st until 23rd March 2025

Chin Tsao (曹晶), *1989 in Taipei (TW), lives and works in Vienna (AT) and currently is on a 2 year residency at the Rijksakademie Amsterdam (NL).