FNAC's first photographic competition, "Terms of Endearment with the Books," has already endeared itself to local professional photographers, who are tired of cliche subjects and images.
Without much publicity, the French bookstore received 200 applications from local amateur photographers. From these, the bookstore chose 13 winners.
Interesting and enlightening, the photographs collected from the amateur shooters are very diverse and cover an amazingly wide range of subjects.
PHOTO COURTESY: FNAC
There is an opera singer, cuddling and reading with her children backstage; a person sitting on a toilet, looking at a magazine of women in lingerie; and a girl staring at an album's pages, while two faces watch her from nearby photos.
Veterans of the photographic industry have lauded the results of the competition. "I am seeing more creativity coming out from this competition because the topic is so novel and it requires some thinking behind the shooting," says Juan I-jong (
Juan says most of the photo competitions in the country tend to encourage showing folk events, local products or natural scenes. There is greater focus on showing representative images and less emphasis on the design. He is seeing something different this time. "The photos show the way, or the attitude, of the photographers looking at the topic. It's more intelligent photography in a way," Juan points out.
PHOTO COURTESY: HANART GALLERY, TAIPEI
Chuang Ling (
"There's more human interest in the submitted photos, more thinking and more creativity," says Chuang. "It's different from the norm that tend to resort to aesthetics or pleasing visual effects."
Local professional photographers usually come from newspapers or wedding boutiques, where they shoot wedding albums. They take documentary or portrait type photos, says Chuang, but the amateurs, such as the participants in the competition, are not limited to any particular interests, and therefore, present angles that are surprisingly fascinating.Yuna Jai exhibits a style that is vintage and classic as well as modern and exotic
PHOTO COURTESY: FNAC
Hanart showcases 25 paintings from Yuan Jai, a 60-year-old idiosyncratic, classic artist of a rare brand in today's art world. The paintings on view are mostly landscapes, with scenes not from real locations, but from the imagination of the artist.
So the peony blossoms are flying in the sky, the mountains are walking, and the clouds are entangled with the leaves in the trees. These are the dreamlike scenes of Yuan's paintings, the result of a restive mind. "I feel like I am flying around, daydreaming around all day, and I have dreams all the time, dreams that have plots and colors."
Yuan has been a researcher at the National Palace Museum all her life, herself tucked away in the reclusive museum like one of the precious cultural gems, surrounded by ancient art. Yuan went to school abroad, receiving an MA from Belgium's University of Louvain. And so she naturally exhibits a style that's vintage and classic as well as modern and exotic
Many would think Juan's paintings look like Japanese toyoga paintings, a misnomer she quickly denies. While toyoga uses regular chemical paints, Yuan's media are bright mineral colors.
"Natural minerals and plants grind into powder and become the paints in my work," says Yuan of her expensive and enduring ingredients. And the natural colors are applied on thin, tough silk, another precious material that Yuan uses to ensure the longevity of her paintings.
The color scheme is based on blue, green and gold, which, according to Huang Kuang-nan (
Local art critic Wang Chia-chi (
Not to be neglected, though, is Yuan's western training. Apparent in her paintings are the influence of cubism, which employs geometric structure, and surrealism, and which uses fictional, sometimes abstract, subjects. Yuan has expanded beyond tradition again though. Local art critic Victoria Lu (
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