Agi Chen (1980-) Born in Taoyuan in 1980, Agi Chen lives in Taipei currently. She earned her Ph.D. in art creation and theory from the Tainan National University of the Arts. She won the first prize of the Taipei Art Awards in 2005 for her work The Powerpuff Girls on Wednesday-1. She joined several international residency programs, including the ARCUS Project in Japan with a grant from the Asian Cultural Council, residency at the Loughborough University with a grant from the British Council, and the Glenfiddich Artists in Residence program in Scotland. She has extensive experience of exhibition home and abroad. Her recent presentations at prestigious international exhibitions include the Fukuoka Asian Art Triennale and “Post Pop: East Meets West” at the Saatchi Gallery in the UK. As an artist and a consumer of popular culture, Chen created a series of contemporary works that not only reflect the zeitgeist and media culture but also evoke collective visual memories. (Source: the artist’s personal website) Agi Chen (1980-) Born in Taoyuan in 1980, Agi Chen currently lives in Taipei. She earned her Ph.D. in art creation and theory from the Tainan National University of the Arts. She won the first prize of the Taipei Art Awards in 2005 for her work The Powerpuff Girls on Wednesday-1. She has participated in several international residency programs, including the ARCUS Project in Japan with a grant from the Asian Cultural Council, residency at the Loughborough University with a grant from the British Council, and the Glenfiddich Artists in Residence program in Scotland. She has exhibited extensively at home and abroad. Her recent presentations at prestigious international exhibitions include the Fukuoka Asian Art Triennale and “Post Pop: East Meets West” at the Saatchi Gallery in the UK. As an artist and a consumer of popular culture, Chen has created a series of contemporary works that reflect the zeitgeist and media culture and also evoke collective visual memories. (Source: the artist’s personal website) …………………………………… The Powerpuff Girls on Wednesday-1 The Phototaxis-5 Artist Agi Chen specializes in refining and recoding images of consumer culture. She tends to extract the key elements that symbolize these images, and transmute them in different forms, thereby exposing the imperceptible influence of mass media on the viewers. Her work The Phototaxis-5 is a piece of her art series that appropriates the mascot figures of MSN, a communication software widely used in earlier times. Her work The Powerpuff Girls on Wednesday-1 earned her the first prize of the Taipei Art Awards in 2005. Chen extracted the colors of the protagonists in the popular animation The Powerpuff Girls, and transformed these colors into concentric circles, accompanied by the imaginary quotidian scenarios depicted by the artists. In this work, the colors are the only information extracted from the original animation, but they still leave the viewers with a feeling of déjà vu, as if they “recognize” these animation figures, through which the viewers will have a sudden epiphany that their perception is fed, catalogued, organized, and even edited by the flow of information from mass media. (Feng Sheng-Hsuan) The Powerpuff Girls on Wednesday-1 The Phototaxis-5 Artist Agi Chen specializes in refining and recoding images of consumer culture. Extracting the key elements that symbolize these images, she transmutes them into different forms, thereby exposing the subtle influence of mass media on the public. Her work The Phototaxis-5 is part of a series that appropriates the mascot figures of MSN, a communication software program widely used in the past. The Powerpuff Girls on Wednesday-1 earned her the first prize of the Taipei Art Awards in 2005. Chen drew on the colors of the protagonists in the popular animation The Powerpuff Girls and transformed the colors into concentric circles, accompanied by imaginary quotidian scenarios depicted by the anime artists. The colors are the only element extracted from the original animation, yet they leave viewers with a feeling of déjà vu, as though they can “recognize” these animated figures. Thus, viewers experience an epiphany, suddenly realizing that their perceptions are fed, cataloged, organized, and even edited by the flow of information from mass media.