Replication and Deviation: KO LIANG CHIH's Corrugated Metal Scripts Project

Event Title: Replication and Deviation: KO LIANG CHIH's Corrugated Metal Scripts Project
Event Dates: May 9 (Sat) – June 21 (Sun)
Venue: Buildings West 9 and West 12, Qingshui Military Dependents’ Village Cultural Park

This invitational exhibition features Taichung-born artist Ko Liang-Chih, whose works respond to contemporary calligraphic art and the on-site conditions of the park’s reuse and renovation project. The exhibition presents Ko’s Tinplate Series from The Wall Is No Longer the Same and Tinplate Writing Project. From October 9 to 11, 2026, the artist will also conduct an on-site production using tinplate materials from the park.

Ko Liang-Chih is known for exploring the diverse forms and possibilities of calligraphy. In The Wall Is No Longer the Same, he reinterprets street graffiti and spray-painted lettering through an artistic lens, preserving these vivid yet fleeting visual landscapes.

Tinplate Writing Project focuses on corrugated tin sheets commonly seen in Taiwan’s urban streetscapes. On these surfaces, Ko recreates the “Liu Style” lettering that was popular on commercial signs during the 1970s and 1980s, based on the type specimens from Commercial Lettering Vocabulary edited by Liu Yuan-hsiang. Through this work, the artist brings back memories of Taiwan’s street signage culture.

Readable, square, standardized, and functionally beautiful, this style of lettering was widely used to write necessary information on tinplate surfaces. Even today, when hand-painted signs have largely been replaced, such lettering can still be found throughout Taiwan’s streets, making it a valuable part of the island’s collective memory.

As the style of a renowned calligrapher became systematized into a typographic model, its widespread imitation also gave rise to a collective sense of aesthetic fatigue. Through the “deviations” that emerge in the process of “reproduction,” Ko uses bodily action to copy these “non-typical” forms of writing. In doing so, he opens a dialogue on the ambiguous position of calligraphic art and everyday writing in contemporary society, while reflecting on the connections between text, streetscape, and memory.

For More Information:
2026 Artist-in-Residence Program: https://www.qingshuiartvillage.net/%E5%89%AF%E6%9C%AC-114%E5%B9%B4%E9%A7%90%E6%9D%91%E8%97%9D%E8%A1%93%E5%AE%B6