Peng Yi-hang is a contemporary artist specializing in conceptual photography. His work explores the essence of the photographic medium, spiritual belief systems, and local cultural phenomena. The resulting images challenge perception and make the invisible visible.
His artistic practice began with the series Midnight Stroll, a meditative nighttime photo series that later evolved into Ghost Park. Over a span of six years, he collected animal statues across Taiwan, photographing them with large-format cameras and long exposures, illuminating them at night with flashlights to breathe ghostly life into them – capturing scenes invisible to the naked eye. In Ghost in the Shell, he portrays museum exhibits of traditional Taiwanese glove puppets in their backstage state, revealing their hidden existence before the performance.
The series Noise is an experiment in photography without light: digital cameras are placed in sealed boxes, overheat, and produce random signal distortions – an exploration of the question whether photography is possible without light. Picnic and Thanks God reflect his observations of artificial nature and Taiwanese folk beliefs: the former examines landscape simulations and Feng Shui elements in commercial spaces; the latter documents carriers of so-called “ghost chairs,” whose bodies bear the traces of years of religious devotion.
During his international residencies, he expanded his observations to socio-cultural phenomena – as seen in the series The Wall, which depicts precisely trimmed high hedges in front of German villas: symbols of privacy and a strong sense of order.