BAPE, Proton, K-Swiss and Motorola are companies that manufacture completely different products — clothes, TVs, shoes and mobile phones — but all have worked with street artists to promote their wares.
In a world obsessed with cool and the next big thing, forward-thinking companies are desperate to impress trend-setting buyers. One of the easiest, and most successful, ways to do that is to associate their products with high-profile artists, and the cooler the better.
In Taipei, local street artists Reach and Ano tagged Proton TVs. UK legend She1 did a live painting for Royal Elastics in May. And K-Swiss flew out Fremantle and Grand High from France and the US respectively for K Spray 2 in April. Breaking away from this commercial trend, AMPM Gallery is taking back the street by hanging graffiti on its walls.
PHOTO COURTESY OF DBSK1
The appropriation of street art by company marketing machines sits awkwardly with an art form that is viewed as vandalism by authorities and the practitioners of which often break the law.
Despite its proliferation on the Internet, and use in slick PR campaigns, graffiti and stenciling retain a rebellious streak. Sharing that belief in rebelliousness, even if sometimes misplaced, like-minded artists have created grassroots communities.
DBSK1, a foreign graffiti artist living in Taipei, opened AMPM Gallery in March last year as a venue to showcase street art, free from the glare of authorities.
PHOTO COURTESY OF SARAH MCMASTER
DBSK1 and his old crew, Asia Nites, were frustrated with the availability and quality of places to display street art. They aimed to display less commercial forms of street art than big companies were using to market their products. "I'm not against [these corporate shows]," said DBSK1. "An artist, to a certain extent, has to support themselves and I understand doing crossover stuff. But it makes the scene more commercialized," and thus, "softer." What's lost, then, is the street edge or style. Through exhibiting work by local and foreign artists, AMPM aims to reconnect street art to unconformity, even if it is displayed in a gallery.
All of AMPM’s four shows so far have featured local talent. Love Hotel, the gallery’s first show, exhibited the work of 22 artists. The second, featured Beans & Bueller's twisted, yet cute, puppets roaming a post-apocalyptic city. AMPM’s last show displayed photography by Kent Dylan and finished yesterday.
So far, the shows have attracted a peculiar mix of foreigner party people, local graffiti kids, hipsters, and middle-aged spectators. "It's really cool; I really like [the mix we've got]," says DBSK1. "But it's not consistent. We want to hype" the venue and take it to the next level, to educate the general public about the art that's happening in their city.
AMPM’s Notebook exhibition starts Saturday and examines the artistic process. Over 20 artists' notebooks will be posted throughout the gallery, allowing viewers a rare glimpse into each individual's personal world and their creative process. Attendees are encouraged to take along their own sketches. The show of rough drafts, sketches, and random, spontaneous work provides a unique insight into members of Taipei’s art scene.
By global standards, the traffic congestion that afflicts Taiwan’s urban areas isn’t horrific. But nor is it something the country can be proud of. According to TomTom, a Dutch developer of location and navigation technologies, last year Taiwan was the sixth most congested country in Asia. Of the 492 towns and cities included in its rankings last year, Taipei was the 74th most congested. Taoyuan ranked 105th, while Hsinchu County (121st), Taichung (142nd), Tainan (173rd), New Taipei City (227th), Kaohsiung (241st) and Keelung (302nd) also featured on the list. Four Japanese cities have slower traffic than Taipei. (Seoul, which has some
In our discussions of tourism in Taiwan we often criticize the government’s addiction to promoting food and shopping, while ignoring Taiwan’s underdeveloped trekking and adventure travel opportunities. This discussion, however, is decidedly land-focused. When was the last time a port entered into it? Last week I encountered journalist and travel writer Cameron Dueck, who had sailed to Taiwan in 2023-24, and was full of tales. Like everyone who visits, he and his partner Fiona Ching loved our island nation and had nothing but wonderful experiences on land. But he had little positive to say about the way Taiwan has organized its
Writing of the finds at the ancient iron-working site of Shihsanhang (十 三行) in New Taipei City’s Bali District (八里), archaeologist Tsang Cheng-hwa (臧振華) of the Academia Sinica’s Institute of History and Philology observes: “One bronze bowl gilded with gold, together with copper coins and fragments of Tang and Song ceramics, were also found. These provide evidence for early contact between Taiwan aborigines and Chinese.” The Shihsanhang Web site from the Ministry of Culture says of the finds: “They were evidence that the residents of the area had a close trading relation with Chinese civilians, as the coins can be
Michael slides a sequin glove over the pop star’s tarnished legacy, shrouding Michael Jackson’s complications with a conventional biopic that, if you cover your ears, sounds great. Antoine Fuqua’s movie is sanctioned by Jackson’s estate and its producers include the estate’s executors. So it is, by its nature, a narrow, authorized perspective on Jackson. The film ends before the flood of allegations of sexual abuse of children, or Jackson’s own acknowledgment of sleeping alongside kids. Jackson and his estate have long maintained his innocence. In his only criminal trial, in 2005, Jackson was acquitted. Michael doesn’t even subtly nod to these facts.
RSS