Table of Contents:
Art Issue Projects 藝術計劃: Huang Yen-Ying, Jang Jongwan “Dual Exhibition”
Asia Museum of Modern Art (Taichung): “Klimt and Jugendstil”, “Genesis: The Sculpture of Auguste Rodin and Henry Moore”, An Era of Abstraction: Chu Teh-chun, Richard Lin, Liu Kuo-Sung, Hsiao Chin”, “Magicians of Sculpture: The Imaginative Worlds of Philippe Hiquily and Arman”
Eslite Gallery: “The Lost Garden”
FreeS Art Space 福利社: Wang Pei-Hsuan “Mobile Scapehood” and Lin Lung-Chieh “The Recoded Realm”
Kuandu Museum of Fine Art (KdMOFA): Chen Shun-Chu “One Piece Room / Fengkuei Chair”, Chang Chung-Fan and Mark Geil “Next Kite, Next Weather” and “Asia Anarchy Alliance”
Museum of Contemporary Art Taipei (MoCA): “K-P.O.P.: Korean Contemporary Art”, “Vertigo: Chaos and Dislocation in Contemporary Australian Art”, Gary Baseman “The Door is Always Open” and Hwang Buh-Ching “Homeland: Edge of Desolation”
National Museum of History: “The Rural, the Scar, the Southwestern Soul”
National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts Taichung (NTMoFA): “2014 National Art Exhibition, ROC”, Tsau Saiau-Yue “Her Show / Show Her” and “Wonder of Fantasy”
Project Fulfill Art Space 就在藝術空間: Teng Chao Ming “Therefore, X=X” 8
Taipei Artist Village (TAV): Stephen Bain “This Means You”, Chen Po-I, Chiu Chao-Tsai and Chin Cheng-Te “Artists at TAV”, Lo Yi-Chun “Banana in Taiwan, Japan and the Philippines” and River Lin, Joyce Ho, Chun-ta Yves Chiu “Artists at TAV”
Taipei Contemporary Arts Center: Kit Hammonds “Strategic Business Plan Public Stakeholders Consultation Focus Groups”
Taipei Fine Arts Museum (TFAM): Wang Liang-Yin “Happy Birthday, My Dear”, Jawshing Arthur Liou “Sacred Sojourn”, Li Yuan-chia “Retrospective”, Dean-E Mei “Wanted”, “Cloud of Unknowing: A City of Seven Streets”, Liu Yunyi “City Spirit” and Yu Cheng-Ta “Practicing Live”
Taishin Bank Foundation of Arts and Culture (Taishin Tower 1F): Hung Yun-Ting “Just go for super earth”
tamtam art space Taipei IPIX: Dexi Tian and Dennis Tan “Tensional Boundary”, “Space of Imagination” and Shaurya Kumar “That Ruined Place”
TheCube Project Space: “Journal of the Plague Year. Fear, Ghosts, Rebels, SARS, Leslie and the Hong Kong Story”
TKG+ (Tina Keng Gallery): “Art for Oneself”
Treasure Hill Artist Village (THAV): Moez Surani “Operation”, Ting Liping “Nos Souffle d’Echo”, Kao Yiliang “Treasure Hill Humanscape”, Yuna Park “Relics in their integrity”, Martyn Coutts “Wave”, Jeon Wongil “The Sign of Typhoon” and “The Red Bloc 2014-1949”
VT Artsalon: “Eating Wind”
Wingrow Art Gallery 萬菓國際藝廊: “huang huang: that daily mirage”
and now the contents:
Art Issue Projects 藝術計劃
Huang Yen-Ying, Jang Jongwan “Dual Exhibition”
The connecting point between the two artists was the theme of the supernatural or religious. Both of them approached the topic in a slightly sarcastic way. Huang’s (who is Taiwanese) sculptures were mostly like one-liner jokes, showing a crucified diamond, a cross-shape box for collecting invoices (as charities in Taiwan do), an atom bomb explosion shaped sculpture of a bonsai tree etc. Jang’s (who is Korean) works were primarily copies (color pencil) of paradise imagery from Jehova’s Witnesses infamous Watchtower magazine – bright pastel colors, scenes of animals playing with humans in green pastures. I found Jang’s work a bit too derivative. However, my most favorite work in the show came from Jang too – he made a slideshow from his Watchtower-drawings which was projected through a constantly moving model of gold teeth. So it looked as if the teeth were “talking” the images projected on the wall. This work did a really good job in connecting the Watchtower promises with an artist’s commentary, which was ambiguous enough to leave space for viewers own readings. The golden teeth were complemented by a golden-mouth-with-hands-instead-of-teeth sculpture by Huang, and the two teeth-sculptures served as centerpieces of the show. The overall feeling was eerie, but that is a good thing if we subscribe to the notion that causing a bit of dissonance to cause a reaction is a core aspect of what contemporary art does.
Asia Museum of Modern Art (Taichung)
http://asiamodern.asia.edu.tw/
A completely new museum on the Asia University campus in Taichung. The building itself is an eye candy designed by Japanese architect Tadao Ando. Given the untypical triangular ground plan which is not very space-efficient, the impression is something between a sculpture and a building. During my visit the museum had four exhibitions open:
“Klimt and Jugendstil”, “Genesis: The Sculpture of Auguste Rodin and Henry Moore”, An Era of Abstraction: Chu Teh-chun, Richard Lin, Liu Kuo-Sung, Hsiao Chin”, “Magicians of Sculpture: The Imaginative Worlds of Philippe Hiquily and Arman”
and a small exhibition about Tadao Ando and the museum design process on top. These titles created big expectations and I was looking forward to see some ‘old friends’ from Europe. The “Era of Abstraction” exhibition was quite standard but enjoyable, there was not enough context for me to place it within a bigger picture of Taiwanese art history, so it sadly remained in my mind as an exhibition of ‘some Taiwanese abstract art’. The Klimt exhibition was rather disappointing – there was no single original, just copies – prints on canvas, but it was trying to obscure this real nature of a poster-exhibition. The remaining space of the museum was filled with modernist sculptures of aforementioned names, mostly in reduced size compact versions – probably all from one private collection (school president?). The whole impression of the exhibition was a bit pale – objects displayed on pedestals, as is customary in some of the small commercial galleries specializing in European modernism. So overall the interesting architecture was in contrast with the rather unsurprising contents.
Eslite Gallery
A gallery within the Xinyi location of Eslite bookshop and lifestyle mall. A rather small front door leads to an unexpectedly large and very neat space.
“The Lost Garden”
– showing works by artists LEE Jo Mei, LIN Jin-Da, Shu-Kai LIN, Po-I CHEN, and Wei-Li YEH. Taiwan really seems to be going through a very nostalgic phase, this show added to that feeling that abounds in art I see around the island. Photographs of old houses in a village prior to destruction (Chen Po-I). Tracing the steps of her great-grandfather (Lee Jo Mei). Collecting leftover wooden molds from his father’s factory (Lin Shu-Kai). Collecting sculpted and painted elements from discarded graves (Yeh Wei-Li). Constructing abstract photo narratives mixing past and present based on personal experience (Lin Jin-Da). The whole show was very minutely set up, very professional. Each artist had a separate spacious room at his disposition. It was a nice show to calmly walk through, balancing different media, telling stories but not boring with hours of video footage. Everything was concise and to the point, yet inviting for a second look, further exploration and deeper thoughts.
FreeS Art Space 福利社
http://www.frees-art-space.com/
A new gallery which I do not know much about. I was attracted by the beautiful flyer design and well-written text inside. The space, located in a basement was clean and nicely set up.
Wang Pei-Hsuan “Mobile Scapehood”
contained sculptural objects, a few of them sensibly integrated into the architecture of the gallery – wooden planks, metal girders placed at different heights across the whole room, ceramic sculptures hung in one row just at eye level, complemented with accurate lighting. The works looked simple, but meaningful on its own right.
Lin Lung-Chieh “The Recoded Realm”
An exhibition of sculptural works which combined organic forms from insects with forms and connecting devices of electronic equipment. The result were strange biomorphic animal-like sculptures which referred to the increasing proximity of the technological and biological realms. Sculptures were minutely executed in colored ceramics with occasional metal elements. The object-ness made them look very product-like, but this should not diminish the artistic merit or the author – they were beautiful and meaningful objects.
Kuandu Museum of Fine Art (KdMOFA)
http://www.kdmofa.tnua.edu.tw/en/
The KdMoFA is part of the Taipei National University of the Arts, which is located in the North of Taipei, about 30 minutes with the Metro from the city center. It is not only a great museum space, it is also a place with a great view on a mountain slope: One can sip a cup of coffee while enjoying a full panorama of whole Taipei.
Chen Shun-Chu “One Piece Room / Fengkuei Chair”
– a small show in the circular atrium of the museum presenting one Taiwanese artist. The work – chair and a wardrobe, both with a hole on the side, seemingly ‘cut in’ by a horizontal electric fan suspended from the ceiling. The work was very gentle and poetic, and it had a nostalgic feel. A series of Chen’s black and white photos confirmed his nostalgia.
Chang Chung-Fan and Mark Geil “Next Kite, Next Weather”
A painting/drawing/photo duo show: Geil is a photographing museum displays (probably to be interpreted as a ‘questioning how knowledge is interpreted and spread’) and Chang is painting abstract colorful forms. In the exhibition Chang’s paintings have been further augmented with wall drawings – this was a fresh move, putting Chang into the expanded painting category. Geil’s photographs unfortunately were not expanded in any way, easy to be overlooked, almost standing in the way of Chang’s geometrical shapes exploding beyond the canvas.
“Asia Anarchy Alliance”
– a major show at KdMoFA, spanning three floors of the museum. It was a very interesting take at the regional art scene and political implications. The show did address activism in ‘public concern’ topics (e.g. the Taiwanese sunflower movement, Anti-nuclear protests in Japan, etc), but steered away from being too direct or schematic: Most of the works kept a level of aesthetic expression which toned down too blunt expressions. This was good: It was art, and it did embrace very recent and very serious events, without being too pathetic. The overarching AAA concept helped to pull together different works, creating an engaging and meaningful exhibition narrative.
Museum of Contemporary Art Taipei (MoCA)
MoCA Taipei is a medium-sized public museum, similar to the Kunsthalle model. They do changing exhibitions of contemporary art, some local and some foreign.
“K-P.O.P.: Korean Contemporary Art”
(P.O.P. stands for Process, Otherness and Play) was a quite large show of contemporary South Korean art. It had a bit of an art-fair feel, given the many small rooms separating artworks one from the other. But it was a good selection of good artists, enjoyable to see. It also came with a great and informative web site, documenting all the works on show.
“Vertigo: Chaos and Dislocation in Contemporary Australian Art”
– A smaller show in two larger halls of MoCA. Here the title was a bit misleading, as the show was much too small to be representative. Also, all works has a similar ‘feel’ to them and similar, slightly humorous outcomes. It looked more like a showcase of a specific gallery or scene. Accepting this limitation, it was still well set up and nice to see – short video art, some paintings and assemblage-sculptures.
Gary Baseman “The Door is Always Open”
– American comic artist exhibition. Somewhere I read the comparison with Yoshimoto Nara and Takashi Murakami, but I could not really relate them. The show was set up like an interior design project – with living room, bed room, etc. All rooms decorated with Baseman’s child-like yet sexually loaded fantasies. The corridor was full of photos of one of his teddy-toy creations, Toby, “travelling around the world”. Obviously, Toby, with a big phallus-like black nose was a self-portrait of the artist. Each room also featured video-message from the artists – if one listened carefully, he kept repeating the word “I” and “my”. Baseman’s self-centered obsession with his childhood fantasies has been the most fascinating aspect of the show.
Hwang Buh-Ching “Homeland: Edge of Desolation”
– a Tainan artist, whose work very much revealed that the artist lives close to the sea and enjoys talking walks on the seaside, collecting whatever he comes across. Materials ranged from rusty metal to wood and plastic washed ashore. These were assembled to often figurative sculptures-assemblages, featuring mannequin torsos, which I found slightly disturbing – dismembered objectified bodies. One room also displayed cages with life birds and spotlights pointed at them, which was definitely not in line with the ‘ecological’ motivations outlined in the curatorial statement. I could mainly feel the drive towards hunting and gathering type of activities. The artists seemed to enjoy the materiality of the works. He also had a great creative power able to put to use any piece of refuse found in the backyard or on the beach. A happy man.
National Museum of History
“The Rural, the Scar, the Southwestern Soul”
A collection of paintings from the Sichuan Fine Arts institute, this show was looking backwards at the last 40 years of painting of a specific “school” if one can call it like that. The collection (all works came from a private collection of Mountain Art Foundation presided by Lin Ming-che) was rather anthological, with 1-3 works by each artist on display. A lot of it was figurative, and from a European art perspective very boring work, however in the Chinese context, there were a lot of seminal works by artists, which were able to develop their own style by deriving/combining the traditions of European academic painting into something new and unique. It was interesting to see Zhang Xaiogang’s early works next to the “Bloodline” series from the 1990s, or for example Ye Yongqing’s early cubist like works which were hinting at the unique brushstroke style he developed later. My own new discovery were winter landscape paintings by Liu Xun, very minute and calm. Overall a very resourceful exhibition if one considered the works within their historical context.
National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts Taichung (NTMoFA)
http://www.ntmofa.gov.tw/english/
NTMoFA in Taichung is one of the largest museums of contemporary art in Taiwan (together with the Taipei and Kaohsiung museums). It takes a few hours for the fast and up to a day for the slow visitors to see all of the exhibitions in the museum. I unfortunately did not have that much time and only managed to visit a fraction of what was on show:
“2014 National Art Exhibition, ROC”
– a salon-style exhibition of contemporary art, divided into traditional medium-based categories. While there were many good works, passing by a long row of paintings, photographs, drawings and sculptures made all the works merge into one ambiguous mass. It required conscious effort to stop and look at one work in detail.
Tsau Saiau-Yue “Her Show / Show Her”
– a one-piece installation in the foyer of the museum, featuring large multi-screen kaleidoscope generated from a mobile sculpture surveyed by a video camera. Accompanied by sentimental ambient music.
“Wonder of Fantasy”
– my first wonder was if the curator used the automated exhibition title generator (available on-line). The exhibition featured the whole range of media-art works: From minimalist (Olivier Ratsi) to technically interesting interesting (Daito Manabe) to disco effects (Sigmasix & Mimetic) to shopping mall decorations (Adi Panuntun). Overall it showed a love for everything that flashes and produces spectacular (“cutting edge technology!”) effects. Not very heavy on meaning, but enjoyable show.
Project Fulfill Art Space 就在藝術空間
Teng Chao Ming “Therefore, X=X”
A conceptual art exhibition in a nice a clean space. Most of the works where on white paper, same like the white walls of the gallery, except for the greyish sculpture in the middle of the space. The main work was a work already shown at the previous Taipei Biennale 2012. The work was based on an analysis of some Taiwanese movie depicting a murder resulting from the social climate of the times depicted in the movie. (dir. Edward Yang: Bright Summer Day (1991), based on a real event from 1961). I unfortunately did not know the movie, so I could only half-enjoy the work. Other works in the exhibition likewise referred to cultural artefacts from the last 50 years of Taiwan’s history. All was nicely arranged and clear, but a bit inaccessible without a deeper understanding of the artefacts (movies, books) being referred to.
Taipei Artist Village (TAV)
TAV is a government-run artist residency and exhibition space. The exhibition space is sometimes used for artist-in-residence exhibitions, and at other times for commissioned exhibitions, usually by local artists.
Stephen Bain “This Means You”
– a mini-exhibition documenting performances which Bain carried out throughout the city: All slightly funny, using daily materials e.g. big fabric bags (those used for construction site waste). For the opening, Bain staged a live performance in addition to that. The performance took place in a park not far from TAV, and it was really enjoyable, as it ‘opened up’ one’s eyes – by undertaking slight shifts, Bain managed to express a level of strangeness needed to make people reconsider the meaning of space and objects around them.
Chen Po-I, Chiu Chao-Tsai and Chin Cheng-Te “Artists at TAV”
– an exhibition in the TAV gallery by three local artists. Chen presented photographs documenting details from local food stalls, unfortunately the installation quality was extremely low, with photographs nailed directly to the wall unsurprisingly bending in all directions in Taiwan’s humid climate. Chiu showed a selection of interactive sculptures, which were really engaging and minutely produced – most of them featured the notion of slacking and unexpected flexibility where one would expect firmness. Chin created an installation, ‘graves’ for objects we throw away (e.g. graves for chopsticks or wine bottle corks). I understood the inspiration came from a painter (or is it a calligraphic tradition) who has a ‘grave’ for his old used brushes. A subtle and engaging idea, also well executed. The three-person show was rounded up by a ‘relational art’ element – during the time of the show, each artist cooked one lunch and invited the public to participate in the eating and a discussion.
Lo Yi-Chun “Banana in Taiwan, Japan and the Philippines”
– a well thought-through project, using Filipino banana skins collected in Japan to refer to a Taiwanese longing for the glory days of Japanese occupation (and early ROC days) when Taiwanese bananas were exported to the Japan. The banana-skin “drawing” presented an interesting material object for the audience to engage with and it was complemented by an installation of banana boxes and a photograph after which the banana-skin drawing was modeled. At second thought, the background story seemed a bit flat, fitting too well into the “classical” nostalgic Taiwanese narrative. The object (the banana-skin drawing) was the strongest element of the work.
River Lin, Joyce Ho, Chun-ta Yves Chiu “Artists at TAV”
A sequel of the previous “Artists at TAV”, with new artists but similar format (same curator – Chin Ya-Chun). This time the common denominator was a relationship to “performance”. River Lin is a performer, and for the opening he did a live performance, “painting” with his naked body into a large flat surface covered with chalk in the gallery. Ho seems to have a background in stage design, and her works were most “artistic” of the three – two sculptural installation with video elements. Chiu’s background is in philosophy, art theory and activism, and he showed an installation summarizing the outcomes of this “New Year New Hope – Futures of Contemporary Ecosystem of Art in Taiwan” project, which involved many members of the local art scene in a series of performances. It was a nice variety of voices. And once again there is the plan to hold luncheons with artists.
Taipei Contemporary Arts Center
An organization initiated in 2008 by Artist Yang Jun as one of the Taipei Biennale projects, by artists for artists. The TCAC space is modest, and instead of doing exhibitions, TCAC more focuses on holding talks, conferences, discussions, etc. So it has more of a ‘club’ feeling then an art institution. A club of Taipei (or Taiwan?) artists. A prominent part of the interior is taken up by a long wall with files, each labeled with the name of an artist, I am guessing all the club members (as TCAC is indeed an association of artists).
Kit Hammonds “Strategic Business Plan Public Stakeholders Consultation Focus Groups”
Hammonds, a British curator-in-residence at the TCAC devised a project where he brought some TCAC members together to discuss and devise a business plan for TCAC. To do this, he employed different ‘creativity inducing’ strategies which are commonly used during meetings in large corporations. During the presentation of results, all there could be seen was unfortunately workshop leftovers, and there was no business plan in sight. In his talk, Hammonds talked more about the past (inspiration and process) then about the future plan. So it all seemed more like conceptual joke, which it maybe was, pointing at the inefficiency and meaninglessness of these ‘creative workshops’ taking place in corporations. However TCAC is very much the opposite of a corporation, and it is full of creative individuals. Organizing a creative workshop for creative individuals seemed more like a tautological act of self-mutilation, bringing up the question: Why?
Taipei Fine Arts Museum (TFAM)
TFAM is the biggest art museum (contemporary art) in Taipei. This time I was surprised that the whole building has been devoted to local (i.e. Taiwanese) artists. One group show including some artists from the region was an exception. In a way this was a pleasant surprise for me, because as a visitor to Taiwan I am interested in what is happening in Taiwan. However from a another perspective, it could be read as an expression of provinciality – the local audience does not get to see more than just their local artists.
Wang Liang-Yin “Happy Birthday, My Dear”
– a very sweet show full of paintings of cakes and related material. Not only that the objects depicted were cakes, the painting technique used also resembled sugar glazing on a cake: colorful, shiny, with visible droplets.
Jawshing Arthur Liou “Sacred Sojourn”
– a video-exhibition featuring three large-size multi-screen projections from the author’s trip to Tibet: A static view of Mt.Everest, a circling around a holy stupa, and a record of a hike around Mount Kailash. The stress was on the high-resolution of the images, conceptually the works remained flat. The four-screen projection of a circular walk around a holy stupa was the strongest work – there was a bit more conceptual depth in the relation of the installation and the video contents.
Li Yuan-chia “Retrospective”
– a retrospective of a Taiwanese artist who spent most of his life in the U.K. and thus remained rather unknown in Taiwan. The works (most prominent from the 1960’s and 70’s were modernism-inspired, with an Asian influence expressed in the reduction, zen-like expression, and calligraphy-like strokes. Knowing the life story of the painter was interesting too.
Dean-E Mei “Wanted”
– also a retrospective of a Taiwanese artist. Here the main topics was Taiwanese identity and politics. In the early phases the artist liked to use found objects referring to the past of Taiwan. Later he shifted to more image-based collage-like works. All around questions of political relations in Taiwan and around Taiwan.
“Cloud of Unknowing: A City of Seven Streets”
– an ambitions group exhibition touching on the topic of (urban) space from different angles, featuring artists from the region. There were interesting works, usually in the form of larger installations bordering on exhibition architecture, one or two per room. I remember a room filled with straw roofs – an installation presenting the Bishan (PRC) photo/harvest festival by artist Ou Ning and also photographs of unnoticed street details by Japanese artist Terunobu Fujimori, the center of the same room filled by a wooden house by Jun Igarashi.
Liu Yunyi “City Spirit”
– an exhibition of photographs of ruins of buildings. Most photographs showed perfectly aligned frontal façade views. They were professionally printed, mounted and framed. I immediately connected the work to what I have identified as a Taiwanese nostalgia for the past and ruin-fetishism. (see Yao Jui-chung’s project about disused buildings, or the Lost Garden exhibition at Eslite Gallery, or Chen Shun-Chu’s exhibition at KdMOFA, or..). This romantic reading of ruins, especially when combined with touchy poetic interpretations as it was the case in Liu Yunyi’s exhibition, is a bit over-the-top. However if we judge the exhibition on the images alone, it was a good work, documenting and juxtaposing architecture from Taiwan, German and Turkey. It offered rich material for architectural analysis and comparative study.
Yu Cheng-Ta “Practicing Live”
– Yu’s work has close links to performance, and it is usually video-based. Recently he seems to be interested in the art-world relationships between curators, collectors, artists, etc. In the past I have seen works where he asked employees of his gallery to perform, and in “Practicing Live” he further developed the idea, shooting a 20-minute soap-opera episode (displayed as a 3-channel large size projection), which was entirely staffed with curators, gallery owners, collectors, etc. A fun idea, creating a short circuit withing the system – a move from ‘art for art’s sake’ to ‘artist for artist’s sake’.
Taishin Bank Foundation of Arts and Culture (Taishin Tower 1F)
Taishin Bank uses a space on the ground floor of its office building for small exhibition of artists. I saw:
Hung Yun-Ting “Just go for super earth”
– telescopes built from cardboard, with monitors inside, featuring Hung Yun-Ting’s hand-drawn animations – a man swimming in the sky, flying around Earth. Three panels behind the two telescope models displayed a selection of drawn animation frames. The exhibition has a cute and playful feeling to me, expressing a child-like fantasy free from restraints.
tamtam art space Taipei IPIX
tamtam is an artist-run space, now celebrating its first anniversary of existence. It’s located close to the Taipei Artist Village. The space is not big, but it’s clean and neat inside.
Dexi Tian and Dennis Tan “Tensional Boundary”
– a duo show of Tian, a Chinese installation artist living in France and Tan, a Singaporean sound artists. Tian put two ready-made police barriers used against street protesters and decorated them with yellow threads from the headband of recent Taiwan Sunflower movement protest participants. The headbands were also displayed on one wall of the gallery. Shortly before the opening, Tian also added fresh eggs in between the barricade barbed wires. In combination with the yellow color of the headbands it reminded me strongly of Easter, which also roughly corresponded with the time when the Sunflower movement took place – an unintended connotation, I guess. Tan’s work consisted of an array of small speakers and one big speaker – wires attached to small speakers were gently scratching on the big speaker, who from time to time ‘silenced’ them with a strong and deep ‘boom’.
“Space of Imagination”
– a group show curated by a guest from Poland (Mateusz Bieczynski), centered on graphic works but exploring the boundaries where graphics reach over to other media. The overall concept was strong, but the strength of artworks varied, from very convincing works to more joke-like works. I especially liked a remake of Kossuth’s conceptual ‘Three chairs’, here presented as a real chair and the Japanese characters for ‘chair’ printed using parts of the very same chair.
Shaurya Kumar “That Ruined Place”
– this was the second show curated by Mateusz Bieczynski, this time a solo of a Chicago-based printmaker of Indian origins. Kumar showed large-size prints, relating to the ideas of decay and ruins both digital and analogue world. Without listening to his artist talk, I would simply perceive the works as aesthetically pleasing objects. The underlying narrative was interesting, but I felt slightly over-complicated. After listening to the artist talk, the works seemed even more complex, expressing many ideas at once, in an abstract way. However they were still there as beautiful objects of art.
TheCube Project Space
“Journal of the Plague Year. Fear, Ghosts, Rebels, SARS, Leslie and the Hong Kong Story”
This exhibition has been developed and shown by Cosmin Costinas and Inti Guerrero at Para Site Art Space in Hong Kong. I saw it for the second time. It is a nice, small, well researched show. Mainly from an outsider’s perspective (as both curators are non-locals), but still very informed. And the fact that the curators are foreigners probably helped with the export-ability of the show, by facilitating a cultural translation. I heard that after Taipei, the show is scheduled to move to Seoul as well. The gallery size of Para Site and TheCube is about the same, so it was the perfect space to show it. Compared to my Para Site visit during the crowded HK Art Fair week, it felt more spacious at TheCube. Given the amount of works – image, video, text – it was possible to discover new elements even during the second reading. One funny thing, and I don’t know if this joke was made on purpose or not, was the location of one video (James T. Hong) in the restroom. Was it that crappy?
TKG+ (Tina Keng Gallery)
http://www.tinakenggallery.com
“Art for Oneself”
– a leisurely summer group exhibition curated by Chin Ya-Chun. All participants were young artists, mainly from Taipei. It indeed seemed like “art for oneself” (i.e. the artist) and not an audience, it was not very engaging and did not provide any easy entry points for understanding. The only work that stuck in my head was Lin Kun Ying’s painting combined with a mapped video-projection. Maybe because this work looked the least ‘made for oneself’, but much more made for display.
Treasure Hill Artist Village (THAV)
http://www.artistvillage.org/?page_id=1098
THAV is an ex-squatter village consisting of small houses built on the slope of a hill next to a river. Currently it is a mixed-use area, where some of the houses are occupied by original ‘residents’, while other houses have been converted to hostels, artist studios, exhibition spaces or coffee shops.
Moez Surani “Operation”
– an exhibition by Moez Surani, a Canadian poet and writer. Scrolls were hanging from the ceiling, listing code-names of all (peacekeeping etc.) operations (in Chinese) conducted under the UN-leadership. I wondered who was the calligrapher… Maybe a print-out would be less spectacular, but more honest.
Ting Liping “Nos Souffle d’Echo”
Ting Liping is one of the “permanent” artists residing on Treasure Hill. The one-room installation consisted of an assemblage of photographs, two video projections and objects (stones, feathers, sand, and mirror). It was all moving in a poetic direction, but I felt the room was a bit over-stuffed with things. Ting Liping also organized two weekends of performances coinciding with the exhibition opening and closing – the quality was variable, but it gave a feeling of freshness and immediacy, showing that Ting Liping is most of all a performer/poet.
Kao Yiliang “Treasure Hill Humanscape”
The resident artist’s exhibition consisted of a few chicken-wire-fences bent into the form of a human face/landscape, placed around the THAV public spaces. I liked the concept, but the presentation format could have been better – for public space it could have been bigger and with more thoughts given to the exact installation location.
Yuna Park “Relics in their integrity”
A fellow painter-in-residence at TAV, Yuna Park showed four large size paintings (three earlier works and one work fresh from the workshop). Park complemented the paintings with a wall painting which extended one of the oil paintings onto the wall and ceiling of the gallery. Then there were three video projections, all showing dying insects. I could not completely make out the relationship between the videos dying insects and the paintings. The paintings featured semi-abstract symbolic still lives referring to human figures and South Korean political issues (Park Geun-hye, the Sewol ferry accident, the North x South split…)
Martyn Coutts “Wave”
Two video works screened one after the other on a large TV in a fixed “screening room” setup. One video was edited from YouTube footage of family videos, overlaid with a thick layer of psychedelic rainbow colors. The other video showed a composite image consisting of a South Korean music video and “reaction videos” to the same video scavenged from YouTube. While each work started off from an interesting idea, the presentation format has been completely neglected. I can imagine the works can develop into an interesting installation or performance, as Coutts is first and foremost a performer.
Jeon Wongil “The Sign of Typhoon”
Jeon’s main topic is nature. The central motive of the show were stairs (which Jeon interpreted as the “sign of civilization”) and leaves found in the vicinity of THAV. These motives then echoed through a number of media, from a large size wallpaper, a drawing, a video slideshow and folded paper installation. Overall Jeon showed his experience in staging a modest, yet balanced show, that fitted well into the overall THAV context.
“The Red Bloc 2014-1949”
http://redteam20141949.wordpress.com/
This exhibition at THAV came really as a surprise to me. It investigated the atrocities that happened during the “white terror”/martial law period in Taiwan under the dictatorship of Chiang Kai-sheng and his Kuomintang party. One room was set up as a MTR waiting station, complete with seats, scrolling LCD display, announcements and metro map. Subway stations were linked to “stations of terror”, when people were detained on political grounds, investigated, tortured, executed and buried in mass graves. Other exhibits combined drawing, text, photocopies of original documents as well as a large-scale installation environment illuminated by dim red lights. This project was surprising to me, as it showed that even with the ongoing political problems in Taiwan, there still is a creative freedom to touch on topics such as this, something that would be impossible in the People’s Republic of China (where artists would be simply imprisoned), but also difficult in Hong Kong, Singapore or South Korea (where such a controversial topic would be silently brushed aside). The exhibition gave hope that history will not be forgotten, and that there are some artists in the new generation which are thinking critically and not just conform to market trends. This exhibition also formed an antithesis to the Dean E-mei exhibition at the TFAM – both exhibitions talked about a similar period of Taiwan’s history, but while Dean E-mei’s work was full of irony and nostalgia-soaked popular images (i.e. popular propaganda) reproductions, in “The Red Bloc”, the authors managed to dive beyond the surface of propaganda posters and ask real, serious questions, in an interesting, artistic, format.
VT Artsalon
An artist-run space with quite a long history by now. They moved from Yitong Street to new location in a side-street of Xinsheng Elevated Road. The new space is a bit smaller, but spacious enough. On display:
“Eating Wind”
– a group exhibition of artist from Malaysia or living in Malaysia (mainly Penang), centered on the topic of tourism (typical for Penang). The exhibition was the result of an open call held by VT – it has been previously shown in Penang. I appreciated a peek into Malaysia, and the exhibition definitely felt different that ‘Taipei art”. It also had a slightly ‘homey’ feel, using cheap materials and collage-like approaches. However this was balanced out with more conceptual works. Overall a modest show, but well balanced, offering a peek into another place.
Wingrow Art Gallery 萬菓國際藝廊
A gallery located in one of the old traditional Taipei neighborhoods Wanhua. You have to walk through the ground and first floor of a tailor utensils shop to get there. It is one large room spanning the top floor of an old-style Taipei townhouse. The gallery attendant mentioned that they used to specialize in Turkish art and now are moving into Taiwanese videoart.
“huang huang: that daily mirage”
– a group show of Taiwanese artists, mixing media from video to painting and small installations. Videos were the majority. Most works were quite catchy, beautiful on the surface. That was especially true for the “feature” work that was also in the invitation: A video of a young girl sleeping on a bed which was slowly submerged in water. Wet shirt? Wet dream? This is the way associations took me… Catchy video number two featured a young girl in a traditional dress performing some Taiwanese ritual procession. Again, very beautiful image, capturing Taiwanese atmosphere nice, ambient sound… Other works which did not manage to create this kind of emotional involvement from the start stood a bit on the side, but they were attempting something similar, addressing a emotions and empathic feelings.
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