The Digital Art Center’s newly opened space, Concept Museum of Art, aims to consider a variety of technological propositions that concern our current knowledge systems and the education of the future generation. As its first proposition, the museum presents Archive or Alive (穿越光牆—是檔案化亦或是再現), a solo exhibition by Taiwanese artist Tao Ya-lun (陶亞倫). The curators frame Tao’s work as a case study for a greater critique of museum culture and the norms of art acquisition. How has digital art challenged these modernist systems and how do we perceive new art forms in the context of institutional frameworks? Tao is known for creating videos and installations that explore issues surrounding human existence in relation to today’s information age. He utilizes a range of old and new technologies, including lights and shadows, virtual reality and digital screens, to create interactive works that engage the viewers in an immersive world. For this exhibition, Tao presents a single work, The Light of Historical Ending, which consists of a vast, smoggy room illuminated by laser lights controlled by a computer program. The space is “fluid and elusive” and alludes to a place where “there is no time, beginning or ending,” according to the museum. Pre-register for a visit to the show by visiting the Taiwan Digital Art Center Web site: dac.tw
■ Taiwan Digital Art Center (台灣數位藝術中心), B1, 431-1, Zhongshan N Rd, Taipei City (台北市中山北路六段431-1號B1), tel: (02) 7709-9091. Open Mondays to Fridays from 10:30am to 6pm.
■ Until Oct. 31
Photo Courtesy of the artist
The 2018 Taiwan Biennial opens this weekend at the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts. Curated by Gong Jow-jiun (龔卓軍) and Chou Yu-ling (周郁齡), the show examines the organic sprouting of art developments in Taiwan. Through a program of visual arts, cinema, theater, seminars and workshops, the biennial encourages a critical reflection on “the organizational structure of artistic communities, the non-linear generation of artistic events and the constellation of alternative histories.” The Taiwan Biennial, since its inception in 2008, has been a cultural platform that continually seeks to address the definition of “Taiwanese Contemporary Art.” By offering alternative ways of perceiving Taiwan’s identity, Wild Rhizome seeks to “‘liberate Taiwanese contemporary art,’ a term difficult to accurately define.” The show includes 32 local and foreign artists and art groups that present individual projects as well as site-specific collaborative work. Overall, the presentation covers the natural history of Taiwan, the traumatic memories of the indigenous people, theater publications, music and folk art that emerged before and after the lifting of the martial law.
■ National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts (國立台灣美術館), 2, Wuquan W Rd Sec 1, Taichung City (台中市五權西路一段2號), tel: (04) 2373-3552. Open Tuesdays to Fridays from 9am to 5pm, Saturdays and Sundays from 9am to 6pm.
■ Until Feb. 10
Courtesy of Eslite Gallery
Yuko Mohri (毛利悠子) is an award-winning Japanese multimedia artist who creates kinetic installations that are made with everyday objects and mechanical components. Her work often utilizes invisible forces — magnets, gravity, light and warmth. Through elaborate arrangement of objects in a space, “she stages a charismatic scene and explores the possibility of establishing new relations between the natural and the artificial,” according to a press release from Project Fulfill Art Space. The art gallery is presently showing Mohri’s solo exhibition, Same As It Ever Was, which includes new developments from her ongoing projects More More and Everything Flows. In this show, Mohri incorporates into her work found objects that she collected during her stay in Taipei, including water buckets, plastic hoses, a kettle, swimming fins, glass flask and a water pump. These objects are configured into a suspended installation, through which water freely flows in a continuous cycle. This theme of leakage is central to her project, More More, which was first inspired by common leakages in the Tokyo subway systems. “While leaks in ordinary architecture can be remedied by patching a wall or a roof, underground spaces ... have no ‘exterior,’ thus the groundwater seeping in from all directions can never be stopped,” writes the gallery.
■ Project Fulfill Art Space (就在藝術空間), 2, Alley 45, Ln 147, Xinyi Rd Sec 3, Taipei City (台北市信義路三段147巷45弄2號), tel: (02) 2707-6942. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 1pm to 6pm
■ Until Nov. 3
Photo Courtesy of Taiwan Digital Art Center
The National Palace Museum last weekend opened Betwixt Reality and Illusion (實幻之間), an exhibit that focuses on the masterful jade craftsmanship achieved between the Warring States period and the Han Dynasty. During this time, artists created challenging works of miniature scale, “craftsmen strove to cut and polish various designs of dragons and beasts that, despite their physical immobility, could nonetheless induce dynamic illusions of motion,” writes the museum. The show includes 212 artifacts from the permanent collection, including 114 works from the original Qing Court collection, and 98 newly acquired artifacts. The objects reflect the brilliant and diverse aesthetics of jade artifacts from that era, and demonstrates the evolution of different styles. While works from the Warring States were typically more flat and two-dimensional, Han Dynasty miniatures were much more effective in creating the illusion of movement. Also, the preference of body type in each design evolved from a serpent-like body in the Warring States, to a more beastly body during the Han Dynasty. In addition to the artifact presentation, an adjacent gallery is dedicated to the scientific research of Kokichi Sugihara, an emeritus professor at the University of Tokyo. His studies focus on the standardized and algorithmic expressions of visual illusions.
■ National Palace Museum (國立故宮博物院), 221 Zhishan Rd Sec 2, Taipei City (台北市至善路二段221號), tel: (02) 2881-2021. Open daily from 8:30am to 6:30pm; closes at 9pm on Fridays and Saturdays
■ Until Feb. 23
Photo Courtesy of Project Fulfill Art Space
Japanese artist Teppei Kaneuji returns to Eslite Gallery with a showcase of 40 recent works for as solo exhibition, Teppei Kaneuji: Romantic Barricade. Throughout his career, the Kyoto-based artist has continually explored the nature of sculpture in a scholarly manner that is playful and light-hearted. Teppei often turns familiar objects into assemblage and collage so as to alter our habitual relationship to them. White Discharge, for example, is a sculpture made from figurines, a plastic basin, clothes hangers and toilet plungers. These familiar things, often seen in hardware stores, toy shops and furniture shops, are taken apart and reconfigured into a sculptural form, on top of which the artist pours white resin to obscure their original appearance and give them a new aesthetic sensuality. “If destruction can bring about new beginnings, Kaneuji takes the concept of collage to a whole different level,” writes the gallery, “[on which] the relationship between man and object, material and space, life and natural phenomenon” are freshly negotiated in the context of art.
■ 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 Oct. 7
Photo courtesy of the National Palace Museum
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