In the past decade, government enforcement of regulations on private sector sponsorship of culture and art have been significant in stimulating artistic enterprise in Taiwan.
These regulations stipulate that the owner of any public building has to put at least one percent of the building's worth into installing works of art to beautify the premises.
Since these regulations came into effect, three-dimensional works of art, such as colorful cylinders and stylized animals, have begun popping up in public spaces all over the place.
Whether or not the works have beautified drab office buildings, they have turned Taiwan's dusty grey urban landscape into a bizarre jumble.
Apart from that, the new rules have helped installation and sculpture artists financially, leveling the playing field between painters and other artists who find their work more difficult to sell.
An unintended consequence of this is that the public's perception of sculpture has been limited to large-scale works. "The fundamental concepts of sculpture are being limited in spite of some seemingly positive developments. What makes sculptures what they are is pure yet sophisticated concepts manifested in material, structure and imagery. Inappropriately large scale and too much public involvement threaten the development of sculpture as an art form," said Professor Hsiao Chung-ruei (蕭瓊瑞), a specialist in Taiwanese art at the National Cheng Kung University.
Such thinking has prompted the Taiwan Sculpture Association to organize the First International Miniature Sculpture Exhibition, bringing in artists from the US, Japan and China to show their work alongside Taiwanese sculptors.
Miniature sculpture is relatively new in Taiwan. American scholars Mamoru Sato and Fred Roster put forward the concept of the "shoebox" sculpture in the early 1980s, originally to ease the interaction between sculptors in different parts of the world by making it easier for works to travel.
The exhibition is not the first event of this kind. In 2000 and last year, the International Shoebox Sculpture Exhibition organized by University of Hawaii toured several university galleries around Taiwan and the American Institute in Taiwan, to fervent response from college students. It was a rare chance to see incredible innovation in one of art's oldest media.
In the First International Miniature Sculpture Exhibition (台灣第一屆國際袖珍雕塑展), currently on show at National Museum of History, the line-up of works on relatively corny themes and of conventional media does little to introduce the possibilities of shoebox-sized sculptures to the public. Fortunately, there are some delightful exceptions.
Taiwanese artist Chen Shang-ping's (陳尚平) pair of Birkenstock sandles stuffed with dry grass is an interesting discourse of culture and civilization.
Unfortunately, in most works, the artist seems to see smallness as a way to facilitate the production process or collection rather than make use of the small size for expressive purposes, such as handling themes that might be impossible in large-scale sculpture.
An exception is Japanese artist Kenji Endo's Luna Sea. A FRP light ball, the work is a sarcastic yet beautiful interpretation of the human desire to encapsulate or re-create the beauty of nature with artificial objects.
Despite its imperfections, the International Miniature Sculpture Exhibition is an encouraging first-time event in that it provokes us to think about whether size really matters -- at least in sculpture.
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