Taipei Times: You're fresh from your co-curatorship of the international Taipei Biennial 2000. How has that experience informed your aesthetic choices for "Orange Marble?"
Manray Hsu: One thing I've noticed throughout my travels around the world, is that the art academy produces "serious" artists who make rather humorless and lifeless art. "Orange Marble" shows that playfulness and humor are valid responses to the contradictions, absurdities and stresses of life.
TT: How so?
MH: Well, art is an attitude to life, while convention is the most dangerous situation of our lives. Convention lulls us into thinking that life should be a certain way. We falsely believe that it provides us the easiest solution for the human condition when in fact it does not. So the real point of making art is what it can provide us. Art that goes against convention gives us a new way to look at our world and offers us innovative ideas on how to cope.
TT: The idea of this show then is to pose playfulness against convention?
MH: Yes. The artists are playful and go against the conventions of art and of life.
TT: Despite the cultural differences of the artists, what do they share?
MH: They share a certain attitude responding to the ridiculousness and cruelty of the world expressed through artistic means.
TT: So are you saying the artists are taking a cynical stance against an absurd world?
MH: There are two senses of cynical: one is to admit a self-defeating position by doing nothing and the second is to really see what is going on, but make a gesture toward the world.
In this case, Daniel Olson uses the image of a circus clown. Clownish humor provides inspiration for us on how to deal with this crazy world. So send in the clowns.
The title "Orange Marble" is so visual. What does it refer to?
MH: title alludes to what art is about. Orange is an unconventional color while a marble is small, shiny and rolls around. To me, a child playing with a marble is very inspiring; it is a moment of real playfulness. Also, because "losing one's marbles" implies going mad, having an artistic marble in one's head is perhaps the most sane way to face our world.
TT: Which artwork epitomizes the spirit of "Orange Marble?"
MH: Chen Sheng-chih (陳昇志) threw homemade bombs made with gaoliang rice wine into a firepit for a piece called Oh Angel. My Bomb!. His title is a play on words. Angel is a condition that humanity aspires to; yet at the same time, Chen felt the [English] word for angel sounds similar to the [English] word anger. Anger is a basic human sentiment. According to Buddhism, we live in the fire of anger. Chen wants to convey the idea that the world is in such a mess, and that we not only have anger against this messed-up world, but we must suppress our anger. His work plays with the meanings of both English and Chinese words. It was a performance where the audience did not know the outcome and it was both funny and serious at the same time.
TT: In your exhibition statement, you refer to the ancient Chinese story of a man who claimed the earth and sky were his house, and his house was his clothes. How does this story relate to the show?
MH: That story of a Chinese Taoist intellectual from the fifth or sixth century is quite interesting. One day, his friend came to his house and saw him naked. His friend said, "You are offensive, inviting me here, but greeting me naked." The intellectual replied, "The whole universe is my house and my mansion is my clothing. You are entering my clothing."
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