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TAIPEI TIMES • WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 9, 2009 STYLE 生活時尚 15 In the group exhibition The Simple Art of Parody, emerging contemporary artists from Japan, Indonesia, Singapore, China, Russia and Taiwan lampoon society’s preoccupations with politics, the environment and consumerism through installation, sculpture, painting and mixed media. Indonesian artist Heri Dono puts the heads of dictators and political leaders onto the bodies of dinosaurs to poke fun at figures of authority. Visitors can interact with virtual versions of six animals native to Taiwan in an installation by Taiwanese collective R.B.T. The interactions, however, come with unexpected consequences. Yang Na (楊納), a painter from China, depicts a comic-like female adorned with jewelry. The caricature satirizes materialism. ■ Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei (MOCA, Taipei), 39 Changan W Rd, Taipei City (台北市長安西路39號). Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 10am to 6pm. Tel: (02) 2552-3721 ■ Until Oct. 25 The work of prolific Taiwanese oil painter Chen Lai-hsing (陳 來興) is as intimately bound up with Taiwan’s recent history as the teahouse where an exhibition of his works is currently on display. The solo exhibit includes some of his early realist paintings of street scenes, as well as his later, more introspective works rendered in an almost surrealist style. The exhibit also shows some of Chen’s landscapes and nudes. ■ Wisteria Tea House (紫藤廬), 1, Ln 16, Xinsheng S Rd Sec 3, Taipei City (北市新生南路三段16巷1號) ■ Until Sept. 27 Korean sculptor Ji Yong Ho recycles tires and turns them into bizarre and often terrifying sculptures of wild dogs, gorilla heads and deer in his solo show Mutant Color. The environmental sculptor is interested in myth and mythical beings. Drawing on the ancient Egyptian artistic practice of blending animal and human forms, Ji’s hybrid creations are classified according to their eating habits: carnivore, herbivore or omnivore. ■ Soka Art Center (索卡藝術中心), 2F, 57, Dunhua S Rd Sec 1, Taipei City (台北市敦化南路一段57號2樓). Open Tuesdays through Sundays from 11am to 9pm. Tel: (02) 2570-0390 ■ Until Sept. 20 Exhibition of a New Generation is a group endeavor featuring the photography, paintings and drawings of six emerging Taiwanese and Chinese artists. ■ My Humble House Art Gallery, B1, 12, Zhongxiao E Rd Sec 1, Taipei City (台北市忠孝東路一段12號B1). Open daily from 11am to 8pm. Call (02) 3322-3833 ■ Until Oct. 5 Cats, Beautiful Women and Decorative Borders (貌。美 女。花邊心閒) is a group exhibit that celebrates cuteness. The works on display, mainly paintings and drawings, depict felines frolicking and women in various poses, one with a cat’s head and tail. ■ Angel Art Gallery (天使美術館), 41, Xinyi Rd Sec 3, Taipei City (台北市信義 路三段41號). Open daily from 10am to 9pm. Tel: (02) 2701-5229 ■ Until Oct. 4 A series of silver gelatin prints by Japanese photographer Noritoshi Hirakawa will be put on displayed in his solo exhibit Unfold Universe. Hirakawa’s images question the hegemony of puritan sexual values through partially and fully nude females snapped in urban settings. ■ Chi-Wen Gallery, 3F, 19, Ln 252, Dunhua S Rd Sec 1, Taipei City (台北 市敦化南路一段252巷19號3樓). Open Tuesdays through Saturdays from 11am to 7pm. Tel: (02) 8771-3372 ■ Begins Saturday and runs until Oct. 17 EXHIBITIONS Sweet Pool by Chinese artist Yang Na. PHOTO COURTESY OF MOCA, TAIPEI HIGHLIGHT Tsai Ken’s sculptures force viewers to confront the limits of perception BY NOAH BUCHAN STAFF REPORTER T sai Ken’s (蔡根) sculptures are difficult to comprehend. Engaging the intellect to decipher the 24 sculptures in his exhibit at Main Trend Gallery (大趨勢 畫廊), titled The Great Form Without Shape (大象無形), misses the point. “I just want people to experience their own feelings through my art,” Tsai said. Rather than appealing to reason, Tsai’s works are meant to express an emotion or create an ambiance. This necessitates an attitude that gallerygoers used to taking an academic approach to art may find arduous. The exhibit’s title is taken from a line found in Chapter 41 of Lao Tzu’s (老子) Tao Te Ching (道德經), which suggests that most of what we consciously perceive is an illusion. Tsai employs this idea by generating a space between our perception of an object and the object itself. “Take painting for example,” Tsai said. “When you look at a painting, you think it is beautiful, but really the painting isn’t that important. For me, what is important is the feeling experienced when looking at it.” Some of the sculptures in The Great Form Without Shape hark back — both formally and thematically — to Tsai’s 2006 exhibit Still Life, which was composed of a series of sculptures made from readymade and natural objects that wouldn’t look out of place in an IKEA catalogue. One featured a twig placed over a ball made from iron wire set atop a wooden pedestal; another consisted of long bamboo poles tightly arranged in and sticking out of a Chinese pot emblazoned with colorful flowers. These sculptures emphasized a spontaneity of design that evoked feelings of freedom. Interior Design 3 (室內陳設 (三)) follows a similar modus operandi. Balls of wound iron wire, wooden and iron tables topped with objects and a stone lion are arranged on a large wooden matrix. Placed within the walls of the gallery, the work is a serene and simple space within a space. Tsai’s other work plays tricks on viewers. Great Form Without Shape 2 (大 象無形(二)), for example, appears from a distance to be a large mural of colorful flowers. On drawing closer, however, a large sculpture of an elephant adorned with the same floral pattern as the background comes into view. The space between the illusion and what becomes apparent brings us closer to the philosophical ideas underlying Tsai’s aesthetic creations and we begin to question the truthfulness of our own perceptions. From far away, Buddha Without Form 1 (佛無象(一)) appears to be a dark ball resting on a stone tablet placed on top of a wooden pedestal. Closer scrutiny reveals the outline of a head with long earlobes — turning the work into the severed head of a Buddhist statue. The sculpture makes an interesting point about worship. “When people enter a temple they are not concerned too much with Buddhist sculptures,” Tsai said. “They are more interested in the feeling that the space generates.” Tsai’s sculptures, whether fashioned to free our intellect or prompt us to question the limits of perception, offer augmented ways of experiencing art. EXHIBITION NOTES: WHAT: The Great Form Without Shape: 2009 Tsai Ken’s Solo Exhibition (大象無形:2009蔡根個展) WHERE: Main Trend Gallery (大趨勢畫廊), 209-1, Chengde Rd Sec 3, Taipei City (台北市承德路三 段209-1號). Tel: (02) 2587-3412 WHEN: Open Tuesdays through Saturdays from 11am to 7pm. Until Oct. 3 ON THE NET: www.maintrendgallery.com.tw Top: Tsai Ken, Buddha Without Form 1 (2007). Above: Tsai Ken, Tsai Ken, Great Form Without Shape (2009). Right: Tsai Ken, Tsai Ken, Buddha Without Form 3 (2007). PHOTOS COURTESY OF MAIN TREND GALLERY EXHIBITION NOTES: WHAT: The Fragmentized Illusion: An Exhibition of Taiwan Contemporary Photography (片段的幻象:台灣 當代攝影展) WHERE: Galerie Grand Siecle (新苑藝術), 17, Alley 51, Ln 12, Bade Rd Sec 3, Taipei City (台 北市八德路三段12巷51弄17號). Tel: (02) 2578-5630 WHEN: Open Tuesdays to Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 1pm to 6pm. Until Sept. 20 Above: Wu Tien-chang, Never Relax Morning and Night (2008). Left: Wu Tien-chang, Spell to Shift Mountains and Overturn Seas (2005). PHOTOS COURTESY OF GALERIE GRAND SIECLE W hat does it mean to be Taiwanese? Can the answer be found among the crumbling walls of a temple in Chiayi, or in the faded black-and-white photo of a family standing outside Kaohsiung Train Station? The Fragmentized Illusion: An Exhibition of Taiwan Contemporary Photography (片段的幻:台 灣當代攝影展) presents work by four of Taiwan’s top artists who examine this topic through mixed media and digital prints. “The artists didn’t directly experience, for example, the Japanese colonial period or the early history of Taiwan,” said Siraya Pai (白斐嵐), a project administrator for Galerie Grand Ciecle. “But because they live on this land they want to examine and become part of its history.” Mei Dean-E (梅丁衍), Wu Tien-chang (吳天章), Chen Shun-chu (陳順築) and Yao Jui-chung (姚 瑞中) are all second-generation Mainlanders, or Taiwanese whose parents moved from China to Taiwan when it was occupied by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) after World War II. They came of age during the upheavals of the mid-1980s, a time of increased agitation for freedom and democracy that culminated in the lifting of Martial Law in 1987. “Up until that time, Taiwanese identity was repressed by the [KMT] government. They educated us to be Chinese, not Taiwanese. But during the 80s and 90s, people started to think about who we are,” Pai said. Mei draws on images from the Japanese colonial period and early KMT occupation, such as anti-communist propaganda and show trials, to re-create fragment of Taiwan’s collective memory, while Chen examines the accuracy of his own memory through reproductions of black-and-white snapshots of his family taken in front of the Kaohsiung and Taipei train stations when he was a boy. Wu adopts the so-called taike (台客) aesthetic using temple rituals and the faux neon glitz of betel nut girls in his digital images to examine a uniquely Taiwanese aesthetic. (Taike is a pejorative term once used by Mainlanders to belittle native-born Taiwanese that has been co-opted by Taiwanese youth seeking a uniquely Taiwanese identity). Yao’s brooding digital prints of deserted buildings, half-demolished factories and abandoned temples leave the viewer thinking that Taiwan’s economic miracle is a thing of the past. Falling on the 60th anniversary of the KMT’s retreat to Taiwan from China, the exhibit — with its themes of Taiwanese identity and suggestion of decay — seems explicitly political. Was this the gallery’s intention? “We didn’t set out to do a political exhibition ... but it is how it came out,” said Pai. She added that the artists who were active during the years immediately prior to and after the lifting of Martial Law thought they could use art and activism to create a better society. “But after 20 years of effort, [they] realize that much hasn’t changed,” she said. The exhibition indirectly raises other questions: How will these artists, many of whom will probably live to see the centenary of the KMT’s occupation, be depicting Taiwan 40 years in the future. And will there be a nation called Taiwan to depict? Looking at the emerging generation of artists and the disenchantment of the artists represented in the exhibit, Pai is somewhat pessimistic. “Earlier generations care more about this issue because they grew up at a time when it was trendy. But the younger generation of artists seem to care more about globalization,” Pai said. Four artists examine what it means to be Taiwanese in a new exhibit at the Galerie Grand Siecle BY NOAH BUCHAN STAFF REPORTER
