Like lichen covering a rock or moss creeping up the base of a tree, Rose Huang’s (黃沛瀅) sculptures and installations take over the spaces they inhabit.
Red Hot (熱境), a 2006 mixed media installation at Taipei’s Museum of Contemporary Art, fused together thousands of tiny red spongy tubes, which oozed out of the walls and windows of the museum’s first floor, to simulate cell division.
She continued her exploration of space and material with Flowing (流), an installation made from corrugated cardboard that imitated the experience of wandering through a cave, the rugged curves of the paper mimicking the ridges, heights and depths of Taiwan’s mountains and offering a strange but familiar environment.
To be effective, therefore, Huang’s work requires a space that will allow her sculptures and installations to give expression to her ideas — ideas that seem to emerge once she understands the space where they are to be shown. The current exhibit at the Taishin Bank at Renai Circle does her work an injustice by crowding a number of her sculptures close to the front door as though corralled into a farmyard.
Titled Pets — Rose Huang’s Corrugated Paper Pets (寵物 — 黃沛瀅的瓦楞寵物), the works appear to the viewer as soon as they enter the bank. The sculptures ingeniously use sheet upon sheet of cardboard to replicate the sinewy muscular structure of our furry friends — as though she’s deconstructed our love for pets down to their physical form.
To the right of the bank’s entrance are installations taken from her series titled Creeping (蔓延), which are fixed on the wall high above the viewer and provide a sense that it’s only a matter of time before the lobby is inundated by cardboard amoebas.
WHAT: Pets — Rose Huang’s Corrugated Paper Pets
(寵物 — 黃沛瀅的瓦楞寵物)
WHERE:Taishin Tower (台新金控大樓), 1F, 118, Renai Rd Sec 4, Taipei City (台北市仁愛路四段118號1樓)
WHEN: Until Nov. 28; open Mondays through Fridays,
from 9am to 6pm
ON THE NET: www.taishinart.org.tw
Huang’s installations need space to breath or, more precisely, take over. The lobby of Taishin seems unsuited to the works on display and when day turns to night the rich textures of the cardboard disappears because there are no lights to illuminate them.
Taishin hosts free hour-long chamber music recitals this Friday, Nov. 14 and Nov. 28 at 12:30pm (check www.taishinart.org.tw for full details).
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