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[ART JOURNAL] Talkin’ ’bout my generation

By Noah Buchan
STAFF REPORTER
Wednesday, Nov 26, 2008, Page 15

EXHIBITION NOTES: WHAT: SuperGeneration@Taiwan (一亂變新世代) and XFUNS Gala’08 (放肆大祭) WHERE: Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei (台北當代藝術館), 39 Changan W Rd, Taipei City (台北市長安西路39號). Call (02) 2552 3721 for more information WHEN:Until Jan. 18, 2009 ADMISSION:NT$50 ON THE NET: www.mocataipei.org.tw

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Curators, the art world’s taxonomists, love nothing more than lumping together disparate works and unifying them under convenient labels. A close second comes spotting the next big thing, the emerging hot artist.

And so it is with MOCA’s SuperGeneration@Taiwan, which features work from Taiwanese artists born after 1980, members of the so-called “Strawberry Generation.”

Much has been made about these artists, who grew up in an affluent environment, after the lifting of martial law, and supposedly struggle to find their own individuality.

SuperGeneration@Taiwan, the larger of the MOCA’s two current exhibits, brings to a close the museum’s examination of this group of artists, who often work in a variety of media.

But more than anything else, this exhibit highlights a trend in Taiwan’s contemporary art scene where the work of, for example, storybook and magazine illustrators such as Mr Red (紅膠囊) or Cola King (可樂王), receive museum space before their careers really get off the ground.

Any “creative industry” professional adept at making unusual noises or designing interiors or fashion is worthy of being seen or heard, it seems. Taken together, the works on display are bland reworkings of earlier exhibits, such as Infantization (果凍時代), and provide few insights into the minds of Strawberry Generation artists. But perhaps that’s the point.

There are, however, some interesting pieces, such as Hsu Tang-wei’s (許唐瑋) mixed media A Virtual Shop (虛幼的貴寶號), which explores contemporary society’s interconnectivity.

The second part of the dual exhibit, XFUNS Gala’08, displays works by mainly Generation X artists, although the title itself refers to X-rays, or the exploration of what underlies the surface of objects.

The idea is encapsulated in the work of British X-ray artist Nick Veasey, who photographs objects such as trumpets and buses to reveal the inner beauty of what is unseen.

Taiwanese artist Daniel Lee’s (李小鏡) fascinating Metamorphing/When & Where, 2008 (演化時空) brings together in one large installation the morphing of humans and animals — ideas that he’s been working on for decades.

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