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A different kind of biennial

By David Frazier
STAFF REPORTER
Saturday, Nov 30, 2002, Page 16

A filmstill from Runa Islam's Rapid Eye Movement PHOTO COURTESY OF TFAM

This year there will be about 20 major biennials and triennials around the world, on average one every two to three weeks. The art world jet-setters that fill this raucous circuit, hopping from Sao Paulo to Sydney to Shanghai -- all of which hosted biennials this year -- can be a Fellini-like cast: vainglorious, vapid and very full of themselves. The biggest biennial of them all is Venice, and reviews from the last one (held in 2001) spent as much time discussing the Prada shoes of the gallery-goers as the works of art.

American artist and educator, Rita McBride, sneered as she said, "I try to stay away from [the biennial circuit]. I find it disgusting."

Thursday night's opening of the 2002 Taipei Biennial did not seem to aspire to the dolce vita, even though Taipei's past biennials have. It only attracted a moderate sampling of the art world A-list: curators, museum directors, critics and 27 of the 31 artists in the show. By then, a few of the artists had even marked the absence of social functions, like Runa Islam, who'd been in Taipei almost a week by opening night and was at that point saying, "It'd be nice to go out for a drink or something."

Wang Ya-hui's video installation, The Crack PHOTO COURTESY OF TFAM

However, there was still Thierry Raspail, artistic director of the Biennale de Lyon, one of the major European biennials to take place next year, who strode through the museum corridors saying, "I'm here because I think this show is important." And there were many others there for the same reason.

A photo series by Hou Tsung-hui, The Filmmakers PHOTO COURTESY OF TFAM

The exhibition, organized under the theme Great Theatre of the World, is curated by Bartomeu Mari of Spain with Taiwan's Jason Wang (王嘉驥) and runs through March 3, 2003 at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum. In the high profile and highly competitive international biennial scene, it takes an idiosyncratically serious attitude.

The muted demeanor marks a change from past TFAM biennials, which took heavy cues from the international exhibition circuit. The museum's first internationalized biennial came in 1998, when the museum hired Nanjo Fumio, a top independent curator in Japan, to put it on the international map. Surrounding the museum with bamboo billboards and rerouting interior flows, Nanjo deconstructed and reconstructed the museum into a flashy, sexy show called Site of Desire.

A production shot of Chen Chieh-ren's video installation, Lingchi -- Echoes of a Historical Photograph. PHOTO COURTESY OF TFAM

"It was very influential on the local arts scene. It really set the imprint for subsequent local exhibitions to follow, said Wang, who admits the influence in his own curating.

Two years ago, the museum teamed a well known French curator, Jerome Sans, with a local curator, Manray Hsu (許文瑞). They created The Sky's the Limit, again reinventing the museum space in a fast-paced show that included a DJ and a few local artist-hipsters with close ties to the Taipei nightclub scene.

2002 Taipei Biennial curators Bartomeu Mari, left, and Jason Wang stand in front of Teaching Machines, a video installation by Tony Brown. PHOTO: CHIANG YING-YING, TAIPEI TIMES

This year, the job for Bartomeu and Wang, according to TFAM director Huang Tsai-lang (黃才郎), was simply to "take our budget [of NT$19 million] and make the best biennial possible."

Hopewell III, a painting by Glen Rubsamen. PHOTO COURTESY OF TFAM

Huang, who's headed the museum for only about a year, made no other demands, giving curators complete freedom from quotas and political concerns.

"Our goal is to be known as a biennial in Asia, not an Asian biennial, he said.

So the austerity and the gravity this year come from the curatorial decisions. One involved the formal character of the works, almost two-thirds of which are two-dimensional of 31 artists, 13 work with video and another nine in flat media like photography or painting. Art on the walls and movie theatres -- it's an uncharacteristically classical approach to contemporary art. And the intensity of classical viewing is amplified by the museum's building, which was not reorganized as in years past.

A photo from the series The Assembly Hall by Shao Yinong and Muchen. PHOTO COURTESY OF TFAM

Built in 1983, TFAM is a minimalist assemblage of square white tunnels that Taipei Museum of Contemporary Art director Leon Paroissien once called "horrible," "formalist," and "static." Its regimental attitudes towards showing art are strongly present in this year's show.

Exhibition notes What: 2002 Taipei Biennial Where: Taipei Fine Arts Museum, 181 Chungshan N. Rd., Sec. 3 (台北市中山北路3段181號) When: Until March 2, 2003

But there is a gravity of spirit as well, one Wang sees as related to the sobriety of world events. "Two years ago, there was a lot more optimism. We didn't find that this time," he said.

Many works take on tones that range from soured to austere, a far cry from the carefree consumerist buzz and playing irony common a year or two ago. American Tony Brown's video installation shows a giant baby's head taunted by a dancing and very unhappy happy-face. Taiwan's Chen Chieh-ren's (陳界仁) video reenacts a 1905 torture scene, the opium-doping and gradual dismemberment of a political prisoner in China. Even the playfulness of Japan's Kyochi Tzuzuki's recreated love hotel is dampened by a note alerting viewers that new regulations in Tokyo are making love hotels into a dying and endangered species.

The consistency of temperament comes from a group of artists with an unusually wide generational span. The youngest are 29. Hungarian Nicolas Schoffer died ten years ago. The oldest present at the opening was Joan Jonas, age 66. It is not the typical biennial collection of fresh, young artists with something to prove.

Works also tend to be recent, with a few pieces showing for the first time. It was a coup for curators who had only five months to prepare an exhibition. Islam, of her 22 minute film, Rapid Eye Movement, said, "I was just finishing it and looking for a place to show it in August when Bartomeu called. It worked out perfectly."

German artist Johannes Kahrs was also approached by Mari with a special request, to create a visual script of his sketches and notes, objects for him usually more part of the process than the finished product.

"I usually don't show my work like this. It's the stuff I usually keep in the studio, but Bartomeu asked me to do it like this," Kahrs said.

But then there is McBride, who's Arena has toured so long she said, "I'd just like to see it die on the road, to fall off a shipping container or something."

There are circuit regulars like Edwin Zwakman, Thomas Demand and the Dutch collective MVRDV. Many of the Chinese and Taiwanese artists, who are considered "national exports" by their home governments and use biennials as a primary means of exposure to the western markets where they sell, are also biennial regulars.

It as an interesting mix, but as the visiting Italian critic, Pier Luigi Tazzi, observed, "I was in Shanghai [for the Shanghai Biennial] last week, but there the selection was random. This is much better. There is a strength and a consistency of the ideas."

The center of the consistency is the theme, Great Theatre of the World. The show begins with McBride's Arena, a four-meter tall set of bleachers dominating the large entrance room. They face the entrance, implying that the stage, or what is to be viewed, is actually the outside world.

"Some people in the museum wanted it the other way [facing the museum], but if I turned it the other way, the museum becomes the stage," she said.
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