Now is certainly an exciting moment for contemporary art in Taiwan. Last year's flamboyant Taipei Biennial 2000, in which 31 artists from 20 countries were showcased at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum (TFAM), energized the arts community, and the opening in May of the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) added a vibrant new space for local artists to exhibit their works.
Taipei's art scene is now further boosted with the opening this month of Main Trend, an idle factory-turned-contemporary art space located a stone's throw from TFAM. Main Trend is the brainchild of a group of people in the local arts community in their 40s and 50s -- an age bracket often overlooked in the country's youth-obsessed arts circle -- who have become active promoters of contemporary art in Taiwan.
As the largest privately run alternative art space, with 900㎡ and ceilings 8m tall, Main Trend's spirit is obvious in the title of its inaugural show, "Main Trend: Sailing Toward the New Era." The show features 31 paintings and installations by 21 artists, all between the ages of 40 and 55. With most exhibition space in Taipei occupied either by oil painters from the Japanese colonial period, or 20-something up-and-coming artists, Main Trend offers rare exhibition space to so-called "middle generation" artists.
The Main Trend show includes many of the big names of Taiwanese contemporary art, including Huang Ming-tse (黃銘哲), known for his stainless steel sculpture of birds, and who incidentally also designed this new art space, Yang Mao-lin (楊茂林), famed for his Made In Taiwan series and computer-generated images of cartoon fighters, and Lee Ming-tse (李明則), who took part in the 1997 Venice Biennale with his portraits of faces with a burned nose. The youngest artist on exhibit is Chen Chieh-jen (陳界仁), 41, who stands out with his provocative computer composite photos of killing scenes.
Yeh Ming-hsun (葉銘勳), the owner of Fairmat Art Gallery (飛元藝術中心) and the manager for Main Trend said the new space's purpose was to "create an environment for contemporary art to grow."
"We have seen exhibition venues with ample space overseas, such as in the US, where examples of factories turned into art spaces are fairly common, but in Taiwan this is still rare. With the new space we are in a much better position to exhibit projects that cannot be done elsewhere. We can show larger works, explore a larger theme and include a lot of artists," Yeh said.
Main Trend offers guided tours every Friday. For more information, call 2587-3412.
Art Notes:
What: Main Trend: Sailing towards the new era (大趨勢：航向新世紀)
Where: Main Trend Art Space, 209-1 Chengte Rd., Sec. 3, Taipei (大趨勢，台北市大同區承德路三段209-1號)
When: Until Aug. 19
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