It's not every day you get to see a tree growing through the hood of a car — especially a NT$12 million (US$370,000) vehicle belonging to a rich chief executive.
Yet renowned French artist Hubert Le Gall and Bob Yeh (葉兩傳), CEO of Lao Tzu Say (老子曰), a Taiwanese tea manufacturer, promised the public just that yesterday as they announced the start of an exhibition that blends manmade beauty with the natural world.
Nowhere is this more apparent than the tree growing out of the hood of Yeh's beloved Bentley.
PHOTO: NICKY LOH, REUTERS
“We had an idea about [helping] the environment and that human creation should work with nature instead of against it,” Le Gall said.
He said the tree and the engine were essentially very similar, yet vastly different as the engine emitted pollution while the tree cleaned it up.
“The difference between this car and art is that the car has a function while art has none; if I take out the engine, [the car] becomes a work of art,” he said.
Both Le Gall and Yeh expressed grave misgivings about the fight against global warming. Yeh said he believed the world was on a crash course.
“Our world's current journey is like the Titanic about to crash into the iceberg,” he said.
Yeh said Taiwan's average annual per capita carbon emissions are around 10.25 tonnes — the fourth highest in the world and ahead of Japan and European countries.
Along with Le Gall, Yeh stressed the importance of changing attitudes toward combating global warming. They hope that through their exhibition, the public can become better informed.
In addition to the Bentley, the exhibition will feature 100 works of art created from the remnants of the car's engine. The exhibition is expected to be completed late next year and Yeh expects it to be on display in Taiwan.
Yeh’s Bentley has been donated to the Taipei County Government.
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