If postmodernism is the mix of high and low culture, swallowing in one gulp past and present, tradition and newness, and all different media, then Taiwan's new generation of artists have certainly caught on to the world's most fashionable movement.
Unfortunately, in the 2004 Taipei Arts Award exhibit at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum (TFAM), they also seem to be lacking aesthetic depth, a common malaise in contemporary art. Concepts that merit perhaps a wry grin on the part of the viewer replace truly moving experiences, with a few notable exceptions. Video or projection installations creating simple tricks of light or animation stretch the limits of utter inanity.
Nevertheless, the exhibit manages to construct a certain thematic flow, reinforcing weaknesses by suggestive juxtapositions.
PHOTOS COURTESY OF TFAM
The striking gold background and black frame of Li Hsuan-chih's
Further in, Wu Yong-chieh's
Hua's series creates a wackier cartoon world while squeezing in a jab at traditional Chinese scroll painting. Four vertical toiles make a complete set, like any good quartet of ink paintings, but instead feature devious-looking "saints" of four different natures. All four share a face and fiery halo, including a thin but greedy looking Santa Claus and a grinning Buddha clutching jewels. Mismatched scenes and all manners of multi-cultural costumes come together for a collaged postmodern effect. The artist makes a smirking nod to the artifice of his creation with the presence of a stage curtain, stage lights and sets hung on strings.
The theme of self-reflexivity comes to full fruition when it reaches works by Lai Chih-sheng
The blandness of New Rainbow is made somewhat more interesting by Lai's display, Time Wall-Space Body. Rocks presented on a white canvas seem to be dotted as a part of their painted texture, until the viewer walks closer to the open cube space set up by the artist. On a white bench, as if a painting itself, lies an actual rock, dotted with the same brushstrokes. The wall behind the canvas is also covered with dots, connecting the display space, to the painted space, to the real space which is itself painted.
Sheu's contribution, Being There, broods on the nature of space more cognitively. A set of photographs shows empty urban spaces onto which their English dictionary definitions have been projected as if acknowledging the impossibility of fixed communication between artist and viewer. The light effects are haunting, but the series is more thrilling when it is almost too successful at searching for new definitions.
Perhaps the best aesthetic achievement is Narrative, an oil painting series by award-winner Chiou Jyian-ren
Exhibition note:
WHAT: Taipei Arts Award
WHERE: Taipei Fine Arts Museum, 181 Zhongshan N Rd. Sec 3, Taipei
WHEN: Through Sept. 19. Open Tuesday to Sunday.
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