A photography exhibition featuring 99 abstract works by 25 Taiwanese photographers has opened at the National Center of Photography and Images in Taipei.
“The Eye of Abstraction” exhibition aims to establish a new framework for the genre, which has been dominated in Taiwan by photojournalism and documentary photography, exhibition curator Chang Kuan-ho (章光和) said at the its opening on Wednesday.
The exhibition is shown in four sections: “Figurative and Non-Figurative,” “Sense and Sensibility,” “Gestalt” and “Material Mediums.”
Photo: CNA
The first features works by photographers presenting “unexpected beauty” in everyday life captured at unique angles, Chang said.
The second juxtaposes works by renowned Taiwanese abstract painters and photographers, and asks viewers to compare the two art forms, Chang said.
The third presents photography that explores Gestalt psychology, proposed by psychologist Max Wertheimer in 1912.
The theory holds that when people see images they do not understand, they spontaneously appeal to the laws of symmetry, closure, continuity, proximity, similarity and figure-ground organization, he said.
Chang’s “Botany 0.5” on display at the exhibition is one such example.
The images were created by scanning sections of plants and compiling them in computer software to create horizontal and vertical images in a kaleidoscopic effect, Chang said.
The fourth section focuses on materials and mediums used in photography, and explores their intrinsic beauty, he said.
National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts Director Liao Jen-I (廖仁義) said the museum established the center in April 2021.
However, the vision of Taiwanese photographers more than a decade ago to establish a local museum of photography and images has not been realized, Liao said.
The boundless creativity demonstrated by Taiwanese photographers shows that they deserve a museum dedicated to photography, he said, calling on Deputy Minister of Culture Sue Wang (王時思) to lobby for funding from the Ministry of Culture to make such a museum a reality.
The large output of Taiwanese photographers necessitate the establishment of a venue larger than the center, Wang said.
The creation of a museum of photography and images is a high priority for Minister of Culture Shih Che (史哲) and herself, she said, adding that she hopes the goal can be achieved quickly.
The exhibition is free and runs until July 30.
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