Things can get pretty ugly when art and commerce mix. Gallerists pressure artists into sticking with styles that sell. If a buyer wants to purchase a painting by Zhang Xiaogang (張曉剛), they want it to look like a painting by Zhang Xiaogang. Government and private sector funding often come with implied or explicit censorship. But Scottish whisky distiller Glenfiddich seems to have found a pleasant alternative — something buzzword-happy politicos would invariably describe as a win-win situation.
In 2005 the Glenfiddich Artists in Residence program expanded to sponsor non-European artists, and every year since then the company has selected a Taiwanese artist for a two-month stay at the Glenfiddich Distillery in Dufftown, Scotland. VT Art Salon (非常廟藝文空間) is currently hosting an exhibition mawkishly titled A Heartbeat of Time showcasing works created by the artists during their residencies.
Tech artist and influential Taiwan National University of the Arts instructor Yuan Goang-ming (遠廣鳴), this year’s participant, finished his residency in September. The 43-year-old Taipei native managed to return from his stay in the northern Highland town — population 2,000 — with his English more or less intact.
“At the beginning I didn’t understand Scottish English at all,” Yuan laughs, coughing a little after being cajoled into downing a shot of whisky for a press photo at an 11am conference last week. “It’s like another language.”
Although something of a new-media art legend — well-known for works like Fish on Dish (1992), in which he projected the image of a swimming goldfish onto a white ceramic plate, and City Disqualified (2001), in which he digitally combined 300 pictures of a normally bustling Ximending intersection to create a scene devoid of human life — Yuan has no overly grand idea of what art should be and seems content with his teaching job and domestic life. He took a five-year break from making art after 2001, bought a house in Tamshui and got married.
But last year he got the itch again and began working on what became an exhibition at IT Park called Disappearing Landscape. He created a technique in which he wheels a camera along a wire from one point to another — in this case, through an abandoned house next to his, through his house, and then through another abandoned house and out into a field. After filming, Yuan spends hours in front of a computer painstakingly editing out the wire to which his camera was attached.
Yuan says that after his five-year hiatus he wanted to “make some works about my new, ordinary life,” something he did in Scotland as well.
One problem with works by Taiwanese artists abroad is a tendency to create “tourist art”: boring documentation of everyday life or attractions in whatever country they find themselves in, presented with a wide-eyed excitement. How is this different from a vacation photo album? Or worse: Aren’t such products sold in airport souvenir shops?
Yuan’s work from Scotland toes the line. He has two works showing at VT, both videos. In Disappearing Landscape: Scotland, Yuan uses his wire technique, splicing together scenes from his life and surroundings in Dufftown. While it is documentation, the cinematography is worlds above your average video art and the shots have a mesmerizing quality, which leaves the viewer wondering how Yuan achieved the effect, even though he’s very open about discussing his technique. One memorable take has the camera traveling through the busted-out windows of an abandoned van.
Although video makes up a large portion of today’s visual art, the medium still seems to be struggling to find its feet. But Yuan is certain of its continued relevance. “It’s just like pigment or a brush or a chisel,” he says.
Aside from Yuan, the exhibition at VT allows the viewer to see the difference in how the four Taiwanese artists responded to their residencies.
The sponsor demands nothing of the artists except that they leave behind one piece of artwork.
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