The Taipei Fine Arts Museum has outdone itself with three worthwhile exhibitions currently on display. This reviewer has often criticized the paucity of exhibitions on the museum’s first floor, which many Taiwanese artists and art critics view as the museum’s pre-eminent space, and which is often given over to “super exhibitions” such as last year’s Monet Garden.
With Formless Form — Taiwan Abstract Art (非形之形 — 台灣抽象藝術), a large-scale exhibition covering three generations of Taiwanese artists working in the genre, it shows the museum’s in-house curators are capable of mounting a superb show when they put their considerable resources to the task. The scale of the exhibition is complimented by, somewhat uncharacteristically, a clearly-worded introduction to an art form that many find to be one of the most inaccessible.
Contrasting the early Modernist explorations into the natural world of art, the introductory blurb tells us that “abstract art was an epoch-making visual assault on the breakthrough beyond traditionalistic artistic perspectives.” Artists no longer confined themselves to an accurate depiction of the natural world, and instead “shattered the original paradigm centered on the realistic representation of subject matter, instead adopting the fundamental building blocks of art — points, lines, colors and textures — as independently meaningful elements in their own right.”
Photo: Noah Buchan, Taipei Times
Formless Form brings together 68 works of painting and sculpture by over 30 artists, some of whom are Taiwan’s most recognizable. From Richard Lin’s (林壽宇) 1972-74 minimalist Autumn Leaves to Tsong Pu’s (莊普) large-scale meditation on Taiwan’s current society, Phantom of Liberty (自由的幻影, 2012), the exhibit illustrates that abstract art in all its varied manifestations has developed into a mature school. It is perhaps the largest exhibition of its kind ever shown in Taiwan, and is not to be missed.
The exhibition’s theme is divided into two distinct, though complementary, genres of abstraction: lyrical and rational. The former’s free-flowing expressionistic brushstrokes “pours out contingent, rich emotions onto the canvas, opening up the possibility of unearthing an artistic language within the subconscious,” while the latter, with its geometric shapes, rich coloring and awareness of linearity, forces the viewer to recognize painting as a plastic medium.
As with any artistic movement that isn’t homegrown, however, there is bound to be mimicry. Ava Pao-shia Hsueh’s (薛保瑕) Embodiment (即身性, 2011), for example, bears a striking resemblance to the drippings of Jackson Pollock’s later expressionist works, dotted here and there with circular disks reminiscent of Liu Kuo-sung’s (劉國松) moons. Or Hollow Cube (虛心正方形, 2005), a limestone sculpture by Jian Shen-min (姜憲明). With its mass resting on one of its corners, the work resembles Tony Rosenthal’s 1968 The Cube – Endover.
Photo: Noah Buchan, Taipei Times
But for the most part, the artists have used the visual language of their American and European precursors and imbued them with their own aesthetic and psychological values. Rational, or what Taiwanese art historian and critic Jason Wang (王嘉驥) calls geometrical, abstract art, began in the early 20th century with Wassily Kandinsky’s and Piet Mondrian’s non-objective paintings that placed these forms of color within a non-representational framework. Though there is no consensus among art critics in Taiwan as to when geometrical abstraction took root, Wang says literary journals during the late 1960s featured Russian-like geometric designs on their covers. But it was only with the return of Richard Lin to Taiwan in the early 1980s, that geometric abstraction came into its own.
“Lin is generally considered the pioneer. [Artists] took what Richard Lin taught them and started to work in that art form: minimal in shape and in surface,” Wang said.
Lin’s minimalist rectangular shapes of delicate solid color on a background of solid white seem to serve as a starting point for later artists, who expand on Lin’s initial experiments with their own visual language. (Oddly, the two paintings on display by Lin, the aforementioned Autumn Leaves and 20th July 1973 are somewhat difficult to find.)
Photo: Noah Buchan, Taipei Times
Jason Chi’s (紀嘉華) Chaotic Order (混亂秩序), for example, is a surface of rectangles in pastel blue, green and orange; Wu Tung-long’s (吳東龍) six-panel Color Lines-05 (彩色線條-05) features several thin rectangular lines in primary colors, on a background of grey-blue.
Lyrical abstraction, also known as abstract expressionism, is best exemplified by Chen Cheng-hsiung’s (陳正雄) Window (窗, 2008). Chen, along with Chu Teh-chun (朱德群) and Chinese artist Zao Wou-ki (趙無極), are innovators of the form, which sidesteps the rationalism of geometric abstraction, and, with its spontaneous brushstrokes of dazzling irregular lines, initiates a psychological and spiritual disposition expressed by the subconscious.
What is perhaps most remarkable about Formless Form is the originality evident in most of the work on display. The exhibition is indeed a testament to the scope and diversity of the genre in Taiwan.
■ Formless Form is located in Galleries 1A and 1B and runs until Sept. 2. Taipei Fine Arts Museum (TFAM — 台北市立美術館), 181, Zhongshan N Rd Sec 3, Taipei City (台北市中山北路三段181號), tel: (02) 2595-7656. Open daily from 9:30am to 5:30pm, closes at 8:30pm on Saturdays. Admission: NT$30
Beyond Gazing, Communion with the Permanent Collection (凝望之外/典藏對語)
Every year TFAM holds an exhibition of work from their permanent collection, displaying objects that date back to the Japanese colonial era as a means of showing the aesthetic, cultural and political changes that have influenced the making of art.
The roughly 100 works on display in Beyond Gazing, Communion with the Permanent Collection (凝望之外/典藏對語) include video, sculpture and painting, “underscore the graphic language embodied and their artistic significance and cultural symbolism,” write the curators in the introduction.
Though arranged in thematic sections — People, Words, Symbols, Landscape and Flora and Fauna — what is most striking about this excellent show is the diversity of work and subjects under scrutiny — and the fact that if virtually skips over the Martial Law era.
With the Japanese colonial period, we find that Taiwanese artists were influenced by the aesthetic assumptions of their colonial masters, who established an art competition (Taiwan Art Exhibition, as known as Taiten) as a means of setting a top-down standard for artists to follow, thus furthering their “civilizing” mission as good colonial rulers.
Kuo Hsueh-hu (郭雪湖) best exemplifies this trend. The recipient of several Taiten honorable mentions and awards, Kuo’s iconic The South Street (南街殷賑, 1930) reveals the assimilation of a Japanese sensibility, a combination of sketching from real life while employing a detailed decorative style rich in color, in the depiction of a busy Taipei street.
Though there was a kind of reverting to more classical Chinese genres — ink painting, landscape painting — following the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) escape to Taiwan after the Chinese Civil War, the rapid influx of different aesthetic influences during the 1960s and 1970s led to a virtual explosion in the styles employed — a hybrid of Western modernist forms with an Asia sensibility.
Which isn’t to say that landscape painting is absent. It’s just that, in this exhibition, it has broadened to take into account conceptual and expressionist art. Yang Jeong-dih’s (楊炯杕) large-scale etched copper print Le Temps Scelle (時光封印, 2005), for example, aligns seven panels so as to create a panoramic view of a mountain range close to his hometown of Yilan. Touch 3-1 (觸 3-1, 2008), by Lee Mau-cheng (李茂成), is a flurry of expressionist brushstrokes that pays homage to Chinese calligraphy.
But perhaps my favorite work on display here is Mei Dean-E’s (梅丁衍) Untitled (無題, 1991). A dog fashioned from clay and fired with an ivory white glaze stands on an ornate pedestal while looking into a mirror of black spots. Are there 101 of them? I didn’t count, but it seems a clear statement that identity/reality is a riddle that can only be unraveled, if ever, by the beholder.
As a blurb in the exhibition space states that TFAM wants to help visitors “put their fingers on the cultural pulse of our age and catalyze their interest in probing ties between the present and future.” Beyond Gazing does just that.
■ Beyond Gazing is located in Galleries 2A and 2B and runs until Sept. 2.
Destroy Design — Modern Living
Demonstrations against the Vietnam War in the US, strikes in France and the Beatles: The 1960s were an era of protest and, for many in the Western world, liberation.
Destroy Design – Modern Living riffs off ideas that emerged during the counterculture movement of the 1960s, an era of open experimentation with sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll, the struggle for civil rights and the perception — generally running along generational lines — that traditional institutions and authority should be questioned and even overthrown.
Mix in certain ideas of modernist art (particularly Dada and Surrealism), which rejected reason and championed the irrational, and you have a perfect recipe to reconsider, according to the exhibition’s introductory blurb, “the meaning of the existing system,” which here means received ideas about industrial design.
Destroy Design presents 66 objects — chairs, shelving units, lamps, tableware, bicycles, carpets — in the form of sculptures, installations and photographs from the collection of Frac Nord – Pas de Calais, an art institution located in Dunkirk, France, and curated by Hilde Teerlinck, its director.
Divided into 10 sections, the works on display merge cross-disciplinary applications of contemporary art, popular culture, fashion design and interior design and are related to the changing notions of home.
At first, I had difficulty relating to the objects on display. From Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster’s minimalist bedroom design in bright orange and the 14 photographs by Barbara Visser showing destroyed and reconstructed chairs, to the simple wooden design “sculptures” by Konstantin Grcic that look like something out of an IKEA catalogue, I first wondered what these artists were attempting to destroy or react against.
But after wandering around the exhibition a few times, it became clear that these works were connected by two theses. First, new ideas in design arise out of the old. This dovetails with the broader thesis that the 1960s were not just a time of political and social upheaval — they left a permanent impact on the way artists approach design throughout the world.
There is much on display here, but perhaps the most prescient theme is the idea that recycling any object, material or idea into something different than its intended purpose is now considered acceptable, even praiseworthy, design practice.
This is particularly apparent in the Objects section. Maddalena Fragnito de Giorgio’s Taboo (2009) balances recycled hardcover books between polystyrene spheres to create a delightful floor sculpture. Test Pattern, TV Dinner Plate, by artist collective General Idea (1967 to 1994), recycles a porcelain dish that is both a work of art and can be used as a TV dinner plate.
Destroy Design will be especially enjoyable for those interested in furniture, interior and industrial design. Though this reviewer cannot decide whether or not these objects should be displayed in a gallery, there is no doubt that the social and artistic ideas underpinning them has led to a remarkable transformation in the way we perceive and use household objects in our daily lives.
■ Destroy Design is located in Galleries 3A and 3B and runs until Sept. 9.
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