Print

Mail

wiki links

An audience with Mr and Mrs John Q Public

By Ho Yi
STAFF REPORTER
Wednesday, Oct 21, 2009, Page 15

EXHIBITION NOTES: WHAT: Open Your Mind — New German Art WHERE: Aki Gallery (也趣), 141 Minzu W Rd, Taipei City (台北市民族西路141號) WHEN: Until Nov. 1. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from noon to 6:30pm. TEL: (02) 2599-1171 ON THE NET: www.akigallery.com.tw

VIEW THIS PAGE

On the day before Double Ten Day earlier this month, German artist Amely Spoetzl placed dispensers filled with fresh flowers in front of Taipei 101, Taipei Train Station and Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall. The reactions of passersby to the flowers were videotaped and photographed by German photographer Bernd Zoellner from a distance as part of the artist duo’s ongoing public art project Just a Moment, Please, which the artists previously took to Berlin and Los Angeles.

“It is interesting for us to see how the reactions we got [in Taipei] are completely different from what we expected. People are really shy here,” Spoetzl said.

Just a Moment, Please is presented in conjunction with Open Your Mind — New German Art, a collaboration between Taipei’s Aki Gallery (也趣) and E105 Gallery in Bonn, Germany. For the first show at Aki Gallery last year, Josef Bernhard, curator, artist and founder of E105, introduced young German painters of the Expressionist, neo-Expressionist and New Leipzig Schools.

This year’s show, however, is a departure from the previous edition’s more traditional approach. At Open Your Mind, the art escapes the confining white walls of modern museums and galleries.

Apart from Spoetzl’s project, which takes art to the street, the selected works are either made from commonplace objects or inspired by everyday situations in an attempt to show that art is inseparable from life and encourage people to appreciate the ordinary and the mundane in new ways.

“For the past 40 years in Germany, art has been more and more confined to the white cube. But art is everywhere. You just have to look for it,” Bernhard explained.

After viewing Germany-based Japanese artist Akihiro Higuchi’s watercolor-painted moths, visitors may see nature in a new light. By painting the moths’ wings to make the insects look

as if they are dressed in

attractive costumes, the artist transforms the often overlooked nocturnal creatures into

something fit for the display

cabinet of a dilettante’s

showroom, and at the same time makes fun of our anthropocentric view of the world.

Combining her life-long hobby of plant collecting and academic training in sculpture, Spoetzl uses dried flowers and plants to create a delicate collection of objects that playfully contemplate the beauty of nature. The most memorable pieces include boysenberry bushes and rose thorns arranged as delicate sculptures and weightless dandelions encased in plastic capsules.

Zoellner’s photographs of people reacting to the fresh flowers presented in receptacles in Berlin, Los Angeles and Taipei are displayed next to Spoetzl’s work.

Local visitors may be surprised to find that while the dispensers were quickly emptied by passersby elsewhere, Taipei’s restrained denizens are seen either curiously studying the unusual additions to the urban landscape, bypassing them, or taking photos of themselves flashing the victory sign next to the receptacles.

Bernhard’s oil paintings depict ordinary people and everyday existence. By placing questions such as, “Where are you going?” and, “When did you stop dreaming?” next to his painted characters, the artist invites viewers to ponder which questions are essential to life.

A parallel is drawn between religious persons and ordinary people by naming the characters after Christian saints, though even visitors who are familiar with the Bible are likely to be at a loss without the reading the exhibition literature.

Bernhard renders his canvases in a pop art style and includes computer symbols in his work in way of an answer to the debate in Germany on whether or not a painter should make use of digital techniques.

“Should painters use computers [to create their art work]? Is it cheating if they do? It is a big question in Germany. For me, the answer is who cares. It’s just a question about artists using techniques suitable [for their art],” Bernhard said.

VIEW THIS PAGE