Eslite Gallery presents One Plus One (壹加壹), a solo show by Taiwanese artist Michael Lin (林明弘). Lin is known for creating monumental painting projects that incorporate Taiwanese textile patterns. He quotes Paris-based art historian Vivian Rehberg when defining painting as “a bounded physical space [in which] one we can settle into and inhabit.” By staging his gigantic paintings at public art institutions, Lin hopes to encourage viewers to reconsider the nature of these public spaces and our relationship to them. His current show at Eslite is a collaborative presentation between himself, Swiss visual artist Beat Streuli, Roan Ching-yue (阮慶岳) and David Yu (余大衛). The show adopts the structure of a montage, in which different narratives are juxtaposed or reconfigured in different arrangements. The show begins with Streuli’s portrait of “Taipei urbanites.” Lin’s textile patterned painting stands erect in the middle of the first room while also serving as a structural support for Streuli’s billboard-size photographs. In the second room, Streuli’s collage and video projection serve as support for Lin’s work on canvas. The show also includes Yu’s display of collected products chosen from the Eslite Bookstore and Roan’s writings. As a whole, the exhibition strives to make “transparent the relationships of the site and locality, contemporary art and business, promotion and publicity.”
■ Eslite Gallery (誠品畫廊), 5F, 11 Songgao Rd, Taipei City (台北市松高路11號5樓), tel: (02) 8789-3388. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 11am to 7pm
■ Until Nov. 25
Casting Stones Into Still Water (靜水蕩漾) is a group exhibition that showcases 15 Filipino female artists. The show is curated by Patrick Flores, an art professor at the University of the Philippines and Curator of the Vargas Museum in Manila. For this exhibition, Flores asked the artists to respond to an installation that Filipino artist Ileana Lee created in the 70’s. In that work, Lee explores the exhibition space by neatly placing strips of tape onto the floor, walls and ceiling, creating contours that mark different areas and conceptually “claim space for the woman artists in the art world,” writes the gallery in a press release. The artists in this show were encouraged to reflect on the issue of boundaries and the claiming of space. Nana Buxan’s Jason Roxas/Marble Worker is a photo of a manual worker whose eyes are covered by powder and face partially covered by a knit hat and mask. Marina Cruz works with painting and embroidery to examine domestic spaces. She focuses on mundane chores like cooking and doing laundry, which according the curator, involves the dynamic relationship between the interior and exterior.
■ Mind Set Art Center (安卓藝術) 108, Heping E Rd, Taipei City (台北市和平東路108號), tel: (02) 2365-6008. Open Tuesdays to Saturdays from 11am to 6pm
■ Until Dec. 8
Hsu Yung-hsu is a Taiwanese ceramic artist with a background in Chinese zither music. Working as an elementary school teacher in the 70s, Hsu founded his own ceramic studio in the 80’s and eventually left his teaching job and music career to become a full-time artist in the late 90’s. In the last three decades, Hsu “steadfastly nurtured a symbiotic union between himself and clay as well as the depth of their dialogue to create his unique sculptural style,“ according to the gallery’s press release. His current show, Unfettered Encompassment (大器逍遙), presents 25 sculptures created in the last four years. Hsu’s work involves a laborsome process of treating clay, where he “constantly and repeatedly presses, compresses, squeezes, tears, pinches, pokes, rubs, piles and pushes to create desired shapes before layering them up to form his sculptures,” writes the gallery. The resulting work is covered with countless hand prints, a testament to his intimate struggle and dialogue with his material. The shape of Hsu’s sculptures suggests organic forms such as sea creatures, ribbon-like fiber, shells or rice husks.
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