As its name Sugarcoated hot pepper confects (糖衣辣椒球) suggests, Shin Leh Yuan Art Space’s (新樂園藝術空間) new installation exhibition offers something pungent disguised as something sweet.
In May, the Shin Leh Yuan art group held an invitational program to provide exhibition space to aspiring young artists, among them Chan Chi-ting (詹芝婷), Tzeng I-hsin (曾怡馨) and Tsai Yu-shan (蔡瑜珊), who are back in this group show.
Their works have a cutesy, bright, fairy-tale appearance in common, but beneath the surface is a much darker narrative.
Strawberry-red teddy bears occupy a large portion of the gallery. With The redemption of childhood (童年救贖), Chan seeks to express how a lack of material pleasures, such as teddy bears, resulted in her unhappy childhood.
This bitterness is expressed in several different ways using the same teddy bears – some are biking on a playground like imaginary friends, others are placed in plastic bags as if just purchased, a few are dragged around by people like rigidly disciplined children, while others are trying to escape through the wall.
Tzeng’s Displaying small people (展小人) displays an array of clay miniatures of human beings. “They are unhappy, because I want to be happy,” Tzeng told the Taipei Times as she was preparing her installation on Wednesday. In Tzeng’s Parasites (寄生), colonies of small people occupy the corners of the gallery. As a metaphor for young student’s rebellion against the academic establishment, these inconspicuous, anti-like creatures seem to feed on the building to quietly bring about its collapse.
Sugarcoated hot pepper confects will be on show from Sunday until Aug. 4 as Shin Leh Yuan, No 15-2 Alley 11, Sec. 2, Chungshan N. Rd.
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