“Chineseness” Feature Section Attracts Interested Crowd during Art Taipei 2013
The 20th Art Taipei ended successfully and fruitfully on November 11th. This year, the organizer had chosen “Asian Value” as the theme of the 2013 Art Taipei Forum, aiming to forge a platform for academic perspectives on the global visual arts industry and to fully observe the development trends of art markets in Asia. Ever since the “Spirit of the East” was proposed in 2007, Asia Art Center has been an active participant in developing upon the idea of “Asian Value”, and through which to continue promote and to support Asian artistic creations. Securing the largest booth in Art Taipei, Asia Art Center presented a fascinating collection of recent works by distinguished Chinese contemporary artists, including Li Chen’s Lord of Wind that hints calamities and natural disaster through ancient legends; Zhang Huan’s ash painting Winter Plum in February that echoes the artist’s national identity and cultural memories; Yang Chihung’s Eastern poetic expression of “stream of consciousness” – Macrocosm; Xu Bing’s Phoenix – Inner Structure of the City that uses 3D printing technology to unveil and to deconstruct the meaning behind our progression into civilization; Ying Tianqi’s Encounter Piet Cornelies Mondrian series; Gao Xingjian and Pan Hsinhua’s contemporary ink paintings; Chuang Che’s abstract landscape painting Mountain Caress; Liao Yuan’s new works using wooden chopping board as medium; Sun Xun and Dong Shawhwei’s still-life paintings that, although both use plant as subject, each has developed their own distinctive style and state of mind.
Xu Bing’s 600x600cm Magic Carpet with New English Calligraphy text on it was an eye-catching point that drew a lot of attentions this year, which was also considered the highlight of Art Taipei. Furthermore, Asia Art Center took a step towards new media art and for the first time collaborated with emerging sound artist Chang Yung-Ta. With the help of computer programs, the artist transforms the data and seismic waveforms of the earthquake occurred on 11 March 2011 in Japan into sounds. It then transmits the sounds to the liquid installation, and thereby creates a situation in which visible data structures and invisible extremely-low-frequency sounds co-exist and influence each other. “hyper.data” successfully showcased a unique creative vocabulary and concept of new media art, attracting significant amount of curious crowd and inquiries from international collectors.
This year in Art Taipei, Asia Art Center also featured a “Discovery Section”. The intriguing trailer of whole new Chineseness series on Discovery Channel attracted many interested audiences.
Chineseness is the first major program on Discovery Channel that focuses on Chinese contemporary artists after World War II. Starting December 15th (Sunday) at 9pm, through the lens “Chineseness”, this program will take the audience through a journey of artist Yang Chihung, Zhang Huan, Li Chen, and Xu Bing, exploring their visions of art in order to comprehend the substantial influences of Chinese contemporary art in today’s world. It is Asia Art Center’s objective to push innovative and brilliant artworks onto the world stage and to further establish the “Asian Value”.
