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`Great Theater of the World' to tread the boards at Taipei Biennial

The highly anticipated Taipei Biennial 2002 has decided on its theme, "The Great Theater of the World," through two months of long-distance brainstorming by Spain's Bartomeu Mari and Taipei-based Wang Chia-chi (王嘉驥), the curators of this year's biennial.

The first biennial in 1998 was an East-Asian event titled Site of Desire and presented a discourse on consumerism and the human body. It was at the second biennial that it became truly international, inviting 31 artists from 20 countries. It's theme, "Sky is the Limit," suggested the openness of the hosting Taipei Fine Arts Museum to every possibility in contemporary art.

The theme comes from the title of an auto-sacramental by the 17th-century Spanish playwright, Calderon de la Barca. There is an analogy, according to Calderon, between real life and a play written by God. If the world is a theater, then everyone plays their particular role on this great stage.

Mari would like exhibition-goers to take this theme in an open way. "Theater here is meant as a metaphor for contemporary art. ... We can see the exhibition as a play and the museum as a stage. The performance here can provide life experience," he said. "We have also tried to avoid making this stage exclusively of young artists. The exhibits will be by artists of different generations working with different media. But they will all be challenging to viewers' perceptional experience," Wang added.

The two have also planned four sub-themes. Stage will focus on stage-settings influenced by new developments in sculpture. Screen deals with how visual tricks influence viewers' psychology; Event shows different ways to represent reality; New Modes of Theater integrates the latest architectural techniques into the possibilities of theater.

The list of 22 artists currently set to join the biennial illustrates these sub-themes. However, the final list of 35-40 artists is yet to be settled. Taiwanese artist Lee Tzu-hsun will exhibit his massive Theater Machine. Swedish photographer Miriam Backstrom will show her tricky photos of abandoned sets in film and television studios. Exhibits of more traditional media will include the young American painter Glen Rubsamen's landscapes which explore accepted theories of perspective and realism.

The Taipei Biennial will start Nov. 29 at Taipei Fine Arts Museum.
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