With established artists using exhibitions as platforms to publicly criticize art industry practices, this year could prove to be a watershed for Taiwan’s art scene.
Respected installation artist and painter Tsong Pu (莊普) fired the first salvo in May with Art From Underground (地下藝術), an exhibit that drew attention to the Taipei Fine Arts Museum’s (TFAM) practice of relegating contemporary Taiwanese artists to its lesser-profile basement space.
In August, video artist Chen Chieh-jen (陳界仁) broadened the criticism at a press conference for his retrospective exhibit, On the Empire’s Borders (在帝國的邊界上). He discussed TFAM’s track record of focusing on large-scale shows — and the huge outlays of resources they require — at the expense of smaller, more experimental exhibitions of work by Taiwanese artists.
Photo courtesy of TFAM and Eslite Gallery
“TFAM thinks it can invest money in television commercials and draw a lot of visitors to these exhibitions,” Chen told the Taipei Times. “For TFAM, that equals success. But despite selling tickets and making a lot of money … these exhibits don’t contribute anything to the culture of Taiwan.
” It should be noted, incidentally, that TFAM did a superb job of mounting both shows by clearly contextualizing the achievements of Tsong and Chen. Still, both artists intentionally directed their criticisms at TFAM because of its high profile and because it is a major part of Taiwan’s contemporary art scene.
In September, conceptual artist Shi Jin-hua (石晉華) called into question the professionalism of art magazines with A Trilogy of Contemporary Art Alchemy (當代藝術煉金術三部曲), an astonishingly bold exhibit at Nou Gallery (新畫廊).
Photo courtesy of TFAM and Eslite Gallery
Drawing on his own experiences, Shi’s show documented in detail the somewhat shady practice of artists trading their works of art for cover stories in Taiwan’s biggest art magazines. Nevertheless, the practice continues.
Will any of these recent criticisms engender change? Perhaps. The Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei (MOCA Taipei) is currently hosting Mediaholic (媒體大哼), a solo show by interdisciplinary artist Ni Tsai-chin (倪再沁) that began last week and runs until Feb. 13. It is the first time the museum has devoted the majority of its space to a Taiwanese artist. In any event, it will be interesting to see if other artists take up the gauntlet next year.
On numerous occasions over the past year, this reviewer has lamented the failure of Taipei’s galleries and museums to adequately contextualize the exhibits they present. Too often the most basic information — dating the works on display or providing coherent information about what the artist is trying to achieve — is absent. This results in a double disservice: Viewers leave confounded and artists don’t get the attention they deserve.
Photo courtesy of TFAM and Eslite Gallery
That said, three galleries stand out for mounting shows that do contextualize the artists on display. Curator and art historian Jason Chia-chi Wang (王嘉驥) should be commended for his exhibit Variations of Geometric Abstraction in Taiwan’s Contemporary Art (台灣當代幾何抽象藝術的變奏), a nine-person show at Eslite Gallery (誠品畫廊) that presented gallerygoers with an adequate amount of comprehensible information about a genre that is notoriously difficult to appreciate.
And Nou Gallery’s compact exhibit New Landscape — Ink Painting in Motion (傳統與現代山水相遇的驚豔火花) offered a superb overview of the preoccupations of contemporary artists working in ink painting and how they employ disparate media — video, interactive installation, photography and oil — to expand on the art form’s traditional media.
Finally, Project Fulfill Art Space (就在藝術空間) is a gallery to keep an eye on next year because it has demonstrated a willingness to take risks on provocative and avant-garde artists and to present exhibitions in a manner that is understandable to the general public.
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