A boat equipped with monitors sailing on an ocean of cotton balls greets visitors to the Hong-Gah Museum's (
"Four kinds of disasters" (
The four artists in this group exhibition -- Liu Shih-tung (
PHOTO: DAVID VAN DER VEEN, TAIPEI TIMES
Liu, a winner of this year's Taipei Arts Prize, may be the best-known of the four. His installations of human-animal hybrids in "Neon Light -- Flash, Flash, Flash" (
Tiger (
Some objects in this army of discarded trinkets are from Liu's earlier projects. "They are part of my past and my memory. I revived these old, broken or discarded objects from daily life or my childhood, because they were once close to me. Their warmth has become part of the memory of my body," Liu said in an interview.
PHOTO:DAVID VAN DER VEEN, TAIPEI TIMES
Chen's Yueh Fei Fights Chang Fei, Bubbles All Around (
The series of sticker-photos and composite photos show Chen and his friends dressed as Japanese soldiers forcibly taking over sticker-photo booths in the streets of Taipei. Both his parents and he are crazy about Japan, Chen said. But the image of an imperialist, disciplinarian Japan held by many older people has become, for today's youth, a dominant culture exemplified by comics, pornography and, as is apparent in this work, sticker-photo booths.
The photos are meant to parody the transformation of sticker-photos from their original use as advertisements for sex businesses in Japan to cheap amusement for Taiwanese teenagers.
Near Chen's comic photos are Wu's computer-generated futuristic images. "Some day we will all exist in cyberspace. Our physical existence will cease to matter. And I believe it will be a better world," Wu said in an interview.
His installation The Ark for the Next Century (
At the back of the gallery, Li's photos of herself posing as an inflatable sex toy are displayed in a restricted area. The explicitness with which she shows genitals in her work is unprecedented in Taiwan.
The toys in the photos are modeled after teachers, nuns, feminists and other female roles. Li minced no words in an interview when describing her intense hate for these role types. Showstoppers that the photos are, they are also morally challenging. But maybe what challenges the viewer's ethics are not the displayed genitals but the visceral hate communicated through them.
The works may show a generation of young Taiwanese caught in a age of imperfect technology, derivative culture and violent emotion, but the sincerity and optimism in them make none of the works in "Four kinds of disasters" a disaster.
Art Notes:
What: Four Kinds of Disasters Group Exhibition
Where: Hong-Gah Museum (鳳甲美術館), 5F, 260 Tahye Rd., Taipei (臺北市大葉路260號5樓)
When: Until Aug. 5
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