No2good (不二良)

One of the artists whose work I sampled in the "Dream" exhibition at Huashan Creative Park shortly before I left Taipei was "No.2 Good" written "No2good" (不二良), whose real name is Chan Pak Leung (陳柏良). According to information obtained from various internet sources, he is one of a new generation of designers and illustrators born in the late 1970s and an Art graduate of  National Changhua University of Education( 國立彰化師範大學) and the Institute of Design of the Taiwan National Normal University (國立台灣師範大學設計研究所) and had been actively involved with the Taiwanese pop group called May Day (五月天) and the design and production of various music videos and the co-designer, with Ashin( 阿信) aka Chen Hsin-hung (陳信宏), pop singer, composer, songwriter, author, actor and lead vocalist of the rock band Mayday, of a teenage fashion line called "Stayreal" and its current in house designer. From a young age, he has been interested in cartoon drawing and his works had been exhibited at the 54th Biennale International Art Exhibition at Venice this year. According to him, what started him on the road to fulfilling his dream is the thought: If you were to be shot dead at the next moment, what is it that you regret most for not having done?



This is what I saw at the exhibition. The works from top left to right
to the bottom are respectively called: Defoliation Mouse (落葉小鼠),
Truck Mouse (卡車小鼠) Sportscar Mouse (跑車小鼠), Exam Over
(考畢萬歲), Salon Mouse (沙龍小鼠) French Fries Mouse (薯條小鼠)
and the big one in pink frame Rock Boy and in the background, you
find the half hidden words "Stayreal" which is the name of a song
of Ashin, with whom he has corroborated and co-operated on a number
of joint projects. It is obvious that he comes from a generation who grew
up with cartoon figures like Mickey Mouse, the Blue Genie or their various
local transformations, French fries and toy cars and shares with all
teenagers the exhilaration and joy the end of their school exam.
In all these figures, you see from the colors and the facial
expressions of the created characters that they are filled with a
child-like joy. This is what I like about him.

Why does the boy have a pair of earphones over him? He doesn't wish to hear the constant
quarrels in his family. He can tune them off by turning the volume knob of the earphone of
his MP 3 to the maximum to drown out such annoying noises. 

In this photograph, you see a series of his favourite "mouses" characters which he calls,
probably in line with the Chinese accented pronounciation of the english word "mouse",
"mousy". From left to right, we have the Hell Mousy, the Bee Mousy, the Sponge Mousy,
the Superman Mousy, the Ding Dong Mousy, the Genie Mousy and the Pink Mousy.

Superman Mousy

The Ding Dong Mousy

Mario Mousy

The Pink Mousy

The Camouflaged Colored Mousy

The Genie Mousy

The Batman Mousy

Why is it that the character wears enormous glasses and has a bandage over one
of his ears? That's because according to No2Good, from a young age, he had been
forced to study, study, study, study every day of his life and as a result, he had to
wear spectacles. And the bangage? Well, when he didnt' remember the stuff that he
was supposed to have memorized, his ears would be pulled. As a result of this
extremely common type of parental discipline amongst Chinese parents, one of his
ears had been damaged and needed to be covered over by a bandage! Of course,
he is there only describing an experience with which many of the less fortunate
Chinese students would have found some less then pleasnant resonance.