Making faces at the world

Huang Wen-yuan (黃文淵) hardly remembers a time when he was not making things. He has done this commercially and also for pleasure. A frame-maker and set designer by trade, he has long been absorbed by the production of masks, for no other reason than it seemed a good way of expressing what he saw around him and that few others in Taiwan were working in this medium.

Persona Theater -- Show Your Face (假面劇場出面) is his first solo exhibition, though he was invited to take part in the Miaoli International Mask Festival earlier this year. It is therefore his big chance to show his face. Or, in this case, his faces.

Huang works largely with found or easily available materials, and his masks take many forms. From the darkly demonic to the frankly comic, and even -- as in his See No Evil, Heard No Evil, Speak No Evil, made from old motorcycle helmets -- cheekily cheesy. Huang himself denies any grand artistic pretensions, content with the appellation of craftsman, but for all that, or perhaps because of it, there seems to be a good deal more sincerity and personality than one usually finds in installations designed to express some highfalutin artistic theory or other.

Although Huang dabbled with the idea of making masks inspired by Taiwanese culture or history, he gave up this idea, preferring to rely on his own creativity rather than a spurious ideological imperative. This has proved a good thing for the show, which exhibits a playful pleasure in finding images or ideas in the twist of a piece of drift wood, or in the effect created by using the shells of duck eggs to create a mosaic pattern.

But since he is making use of things that are close at hand, the Taiwanese influence comes through anyway, albeit in an unpremeditated manner. Old style Taiwanese aluminum woks, rag mops, bamboo root, broken up bits of scourers, rice grains, workmen's gloves are all instantly recognizable as part of everyday life in Taiwan.

Huang has also created a number of masks that are very clearly recognizable as Chinese, creating one from the character "to look,"and others creating puns with various auspicious words. These, in the clarity of their intention, are arguably the least effective of the works. Others, such as the children's book-like sunny face made of dried rice stalks, have many layers of interest apart from the joy the work itself expresses.

The exhibition has made effective use of the relatively intimate environment offered by the Fruit Wine Building of the Huashan Arts District, and the idea of the show as a theater of personalities is realized by the creation of a park-like atmosphere. Hay on the floor, a park bench as one of the displays for masks, occasional tree stumps which are used both as inviting seats and display stands, and 60 or so faces looking out from the twilight, all create an atmosphere of being watched and watching others -- which for some of us, is what going to art exhibitions was all about in the first place.

A Persona Theater -- Show Your Face by Huang Wen-yua will be on display at the Fruit Wine Building, Huashan Arts District until July 6.