Two exhibitions by young Taiwanese women at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum set completely different tones but show a shared playfulness in the use of their respective materials and exhibition space.
Lin Chia-chen (林佳臻) invites viewers to remove their shoes and wear slippers to enter her exhibit, which she's titled In My Little White Room. The interior is actually not small at all, but the entire space is a brilliant white, with Plexiglass cases seemingly floating at face level above the ground for an effect that brings to mind the inside of a spaceship. Inside the hanging cases, resting on white cushions, are ivory-colored wax sculptures.
In one is a hand, a finger of which is elongated into a shin bone which is then connected to a foot. The hand and foot are molds of Lin's own hand and foot. In the second case is a wax bar with molds of Lin's right ear on both sides. On the walls of the space are scores of these identical ears in thick clusters and on the floor is a giant wax ear with a candle burning in its center.
The whiteness of the walls and floor brings a quiet to the space that is amplified by the wax ears, which would appear to be listening for something that we cannot hear -- perhaps a conversation taking place beyond our range of hearing. It's as pleasantly reassuring a thought as it is unsettling.
Two video pieces in an adjacent white room focus on Lin's hands, but are so short they feel like technical mistakes.
The second exhibition, by Huang Lan-ya (黃蘭雅), uses a rainbow of color to liven up her experiments with hot-melt glue. Huang has used this glue to create three-dimensional forms that were inspired in part by the artist's first scuba diving trip. It's easy to see why, as the objects she's created using the glue look like approximations of marine plant life, or in some cases extraterrestrial plant life. The pieces could have been lifted from the set of a sci-fi B-movie. One half expects them to begin heaving and throbbing.
The largest piece in Huang's exhibit makes a type of mosaic installed on the wall in a multi-colored cloud that connects with a bright blue over-sized doughnut with menacing brown teeth in the middle.
When looking at these objects, one thought kept recurring: these colorful blobs need to be converted into lamps. According to Huang, people have made many requests for her to do that, but she so far hasn't. Such a shame.
Exhibition notes
What: "In My Little White Room" by Lin Chia-chen and "Molding the Mind's Eye" by Huang Lan-ya
When: now to June 6
Where: Taipei Fine Arts Museum, 181 Zhongshan N Rd, Sec 3, Taipei
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