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[ ART JOURNAL ] Objects in the mirror are stranger than they appear

By Ho Yi
STAFF REPORTER
Wednesday, Jun 03, 2009, Page 15

EXHIBITION NOTES: WHAT: Yuki Okumura/Chiang Chung-lun: Secret Life (奧村雄樹／江忠倫：秘密生活) WHERE: Galerie Grand Siecle (新苑藝術), 17, Alley 51, Ln 12, Bade Rd Sec 3, Taipei City (台北市八德路三段12巷51弄17號). Tel: (02) 2578-5630 WHEN: Through June 28. The gallery is open Tuesdays to Sundays from 1pm to 6pm ON THE NET: www.changsgallery.com.tw

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“I saw a little head floating in the air one time when I rode a motorcycle on the street of Taipei. I was startled for a second,” said Japanese artist Yuki Okumura, who in 2007 was an artist in residence at Taipei Artist Village (台北國際藝術村).

It took Okumura another fleeing second to realize that the floating head was actually a motorcyclist’s face reflected in his rear-view mirror.

This and other novel experiences in Taipei became inspiration for the 31-year-old artist’s first official exhibition at a private gallery in Taiwan, where his art is on display with works by up-and-coming Taiwanese artist Chiang Chung-lun (江忠倫) at Galerie Grand Siecle (新苑藝術). The joint exhibition Yuki Okumura/Chiang Chung-lun: Secret Life (奧村雄樹／江忠倫：秘密生活) sees the two artists using their own bodies and low-tech gadgets to make everyday experiences seem less familiar and offer humorous new perspectives on our daily routines.

Okumura’ s pieces in the exhibition transcend the boundary between fantasy and reality by making a synthesis out of the two. In Me Riding Motorcycles in Taipei, large poster prints show what at first appear to be ordinary photos of motorbikes in heavy traffic. But a closer inspection reveals that the reflections in each motorcyclist’s rear-view mirror have been replaced by images of the artist’s face.

“As civilized human beings, we know that the faces in the mirror belong to bikers behind us. But sometimes I doubt it. I imagine what he or she looks like, thinking ‘Maybe they are all me riding motorcycles?’” Okumura explained in English.

A similar reality-bending game plays out in Me Eating Fog in Linkou, which was shot using a consumer video camera and shows the artist appearing to swallow fog at his apartment in Linkou (林口), Taipei County. The heavy fog that Okumura said surrounded his room 24 hours a day seems to have inspired him to reenact the Japanese myth of fog- and mist-eating immortals who live high in the mountains.

Like Okumura, Chiang is also adept at discovering the strange and the bizarre in the mundane. Currently a student at the Graduate Institute of Plastic Arts at Tainan National University of the Arts (台南藝術大學造形藝術研究所), Chiang is known for using everyday items and low-tech gizmos to simulate images commonly seen on television and in other popular media.

Composed of a series of photographs and video shot by a consumer digital camera and mobile phone, A-Fo Project is Chiang’s vision of Tainan as a Taiwanese version of Area 51. What appears to be a UFO, but is in fact the lid of a cooking pot, is seen rising from the ocean, flying over the city, crashing into a building and crash-landing in a park in images that look as if they were captured using a Polaroid camera.

Chiang said he plans to mine unsolved mysteries such as the Loch Ness Monster and crop circles for future material for this ongoing series.

“For all we know, the Loch Ness Monster and crop circles may well have been made up by locals to promote tourism. Perhaps one day Taiwan will also be famous for its Choshui River Monster and rice paddy circles,” he said.

For Microcosm, Chiang created a model of the solar system using a light bulb and acrylic paint. Visitors are advised to refrain from touching the work. Aside from the fact that this is (usually) proper museum etiquette, the planets were made from the artist’s own feces, which he dried using the flame from a cigarette lighter.

Chiang gave a terse reply when asked why he used his own excrement for the piece: “The cosmos is in the human body.”

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