…my works are personal, and the only person [who] needs to understand them is myself.”
When pressed about whether viewers tend to have misconceptions about the political nature or general point of his works, he’s equally divorced from the process: “I don’t mind it, my works are personal, and the only person needs to understand them is myself. For those who have misconceptions about my work are not important to me. They are not buying anyway.”
Pan was born in Taiwan in 1976. Learning the war-torn histories of the U.S., China, and Japan had a profound impact
on the young Pan, and he maintains that many of his works are retellings of those stories in his own voice. After moving to the U.S., he acquired both his BFA (Illustration, 2001) and MFA (Illustration as Visual Essay, 2007) at New York City’s SVA. But it was after his academic years that he faced an existential crisis. Looking back, Pan says he found himself “trying so hard to be a painter.” After attempting a foray into abstract work for two years, which he now calls considers a disaster. “I was frustrated and I realized I really did not like painting at all,” he momentarily abandoned art.
It was then that Pan slowly edged back to the reason he gravitate toward making art as an ‘80s youth. “I started to pick up the pen and draw the things that like my sketchbook drawings again,” he says. “I found myself totally indulgent in it. I got the feeling of wanting to work. I finally felt completely happy in creating something nonstop again, just like how I used to draw when I was a kid with ballpoint pen. From that moment, I got rid of all my oil painting supplies. I was never a painter to begin with. I love drawing manga, I love telling stories, and I love looking at ukiyo-e and other Asian traditional narrative images. I should just do the things where my passion really is.”
Now, Pan exhibits across the world. He’s had recent shows in Denmark, Paris, New England, and Los Angeles. Reactions vary, he says, depending on the country and the audience, and whether or not they come with humor, political, or a general thirst for battle. He says most of his collectors are in Europe. (“I started in Paris with HEY magazine show, then people started paying attention to me,” he says.) And that aside from participating in some art fairs with Gallery Poulsen in Miami and New York City each year and a few solo shows in Los Angeles and Brooklyn, his U.S. audiences are “just a few who are really into monsters and ukiyo-e kind of work.”
But it becomes most complicated when Pan divulges his relationship with his home country. The artist says that despite being born in Taiwan, his family history gives him a “thirst for being accepted by Chinese people and being recognized as one of them.” He seeks the mainland of China as a place to call home for his work. However, he hasn’t been embraced as he desires by China, likening the feeling to being a “bastard child are longing for his real mother. It is really ironic that the place I have encountered with the culture conflict is actually from my original culture.”
And in Taiwan, his works are just unwelcome, he says. “Many of the subjects of my images are attacking the pro–independency party and group, and they are very personal. Plus, I always praise the Chinese Communist Party and Chinese nationalism in my work. I do that on my social media platform with a very high tone too. Therefore, most people in Taiwan, especially younger audiences, really do not wish to see my work, and I have almost zero fans there. This fact did not stop me from making those images. In fact, I will make it even more offensive to them with more intensity.”
