Tsai Ken’s (蔡根) sculptures are difficult to comprehend. Engaging the intellect to decipher the 24 sculptures in his exhibit at Main Trend Gallery (大趨勢畫廊), titled The Great Form Without Shape (大象無形), misses the point.
“I just want people to experience their own feelings through my art,” Tsai said.
Rather than appealing to reason, Tsai’s works are meant to express an emotion or create an ambiance. This necessitates an attitude that gallerygoers used to taking an academic approach to art may find arduous.
The exhibit’s title is taken from a line found in Chapter 41 of Lao Tzu’s (老子) Tao Te Ching (道德經), which suggests that most of what we consciously perceive is an illusion. Tsai employs this idea by generating a space between our perception of an object and the object itself.
“Take painting for example,” Tsai said. “When you look at a painting, you think it is beautiful, but really the painting isn’t that important. For me, what is important is the feeling experienced when looking at it.”
Some of the sculptures in The Great Form Without Shape hark back — both formally and thematically — to Tsai’s 2006 exhibit Still Life, which was composed of a series of sculptures made from readymade and natural objects that wouldn’t look out of place in an IKEA catalogue.
One featured a twig placed over a ball made from iron wire set atop a wooden pedestal; another consisted of long bamboo poles tightly arranged in and sticking out of a
Chinese pot emblazoned with colorful flowers.
These sculptures emphasized a spontaneity of design that evoked feelings
of freedom.
Interior Design 3 (室內陳設(三)) follows a similar modus operandi. Balls of wound iron wire, wooden and iron tables topped with objects and a stone lion are arranged on a large wooden matrix. Placed within the walls of the gallery, the work is a serene and simple space within a space.
Tsai’s other work plays tricks on viewers. Great Form Without Shape 2 (大象無形(二)), for example, appears from a distance to be a large mural of colorful flowers. On drawing closer, however, a large sculpture of an elephant adorned with the same floral pattern as the background comes into view. The space between the illusion and what becomes apparent brings us closer to the philosophical ideas underlying Tsai’s aesthetic creations and we begin to question the truthfulness of our own perceptions.
From far away, Buddha Without Form 1 (佛無象(一)) appears to be a dark ball resting on a stone tablet placed on top of a wooden pedestal.
Closer scrutiny reveals the outline of a head with long earlobes — turning the work into the severed head of a Buddhist statue. The sculpture makes an interesting point about worship.
“When people enter a temple they are not concerned too much with Buddhist sculptures,” Tsai said. “They are more interested in the feeling that the space generates.”
Tsai’s sculptures, whether fashioned to free our intellect or prompt us to question the limits of perception, offer augmented ways of experiencing art.
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
Located down a sideroad in old Wanhua District (萬華區), Waley Art (水谷藝術) has an established reputation for curating some of the more provocative indie art exhibitions in Taipei. And this month is no exception. Beyond the innocuous facade of a shophouse, the full three stories of the gallery space (including the basement) have been taken over by photographs, installation videos and abstract images courtesy of two creatives who hail from the opposite ends of the earth, Taiwan’s Hsu Yi-ting (許懿婷) and Germany’s Benjamin Janzen. “In 2019, I had an art residency in Europe,” Hsu says. “I met Benjamin in the lobby
April 22 to April 28 The true identity of the mastermind behind the Demon Gang (魔鬼黨) was undoubtedly on the minds of countless schoolchildren in late 1958. In the days leading up to the big reveal, more than 10,000 guesses were sent to Ta Hwa Publishing Co (大華文化社) for a chance to win prizes. The smash success of the comic series Great Battle Against the Demon Gang (大戰魔鬼黨) came as a surprise to author Yeh Hung-chia (葉宏甲), who had long given up on his dream after being jailed for 10 months in 1947 over political cartoons. Protagonist
A fossil jawbone found by a British girl and her father on a beach in Somerset, England belongs to a gigantic marine reptile dating to 202 million years ago that appears to have been among the largest animals ever on Earth. Researchers said on Wednesday the bone, called a surangular, was from a type of ocean-going reptile called an ichthyosaur. Based on its dimensions compared to the same bone in closely related ichthyosaurs, the researchers estimated that the Triassic Period creature, which they named Ichthyotitan severnensis, was between 22-26 meters long. That would make it perhaps the largest-known marine reptile and would