Exhibition Director｜ZOE CHANG, How Art Museum
Artists｜aaajiao, Lin Ke, Liu Guoqiang, Liu Yue, Zhu Changquan
Venue: Asia Art Center Taipei II ∣ No.93, Lequn 2nd Rd., Taipei
10462, Taiwan
Date｜May 02-Jun 07, 2015
Gallery Hours｜Tuesday – Sunday, 10:00am – 6:30pm (Closed on
Monday)
Sponsored by｜ViewSonic, Philips
Continuing after our “This is Not Painting” exhibition, the Asia Arts Center is following up with our focus on contemporary Chinese artistic transformation with the “This is Not Video” exhibition at our gallery at Dazhi. This exhibition features the works of five Chinese contemporary emerging artists; aaajiao, Lin Ke, Lin Guoqiang, Liu Yue, and Zhu Changquan. The exhibit involves a variety of experimentation including direct experience in the exhibit, to explore adjusting how we are accustomed to thinking about art and evolving our modes of customary logic.
As one enters the exhibition, you are greeted by the main wall displaying aaajiao’s “Object 5” , with its multilayered blues in a pieced together twin screen as they start to move, as if ore floating between a void. On the right side is a small work, “Object 4”, which viewers must bend down at the waist to see what looks like detailed changes in a section of rock. After viewing attentively, one then realizes these images were created through computer algorithmic computations, evoking the semiotic sense of how our interpretive reading of information influences our understanding of the real world, and the revelation of a new aesthetic interest.
On the left side one encounters three works of Lin Ke: “Lightning”, “Pu”, “Download Rain No. 2”, revealing how the artist uses computers in an active record. The original functionality of the mouse and data folders emerge in Lin Ke’s clever interpretation with new life. Users witness the screen before them as if engaged in a physical performance, and there is a dramatic connection created with the world beyond. Throughout the exhibition one can occasionally hear the computer camera countdown with background piano music, as one feels the artist’s encounter with high technology, and transformation into a witty romantic.
As one further enters the exhibition, one recalls Lin Ke’s strong sense of contemporariness in audiovisual imagery, with two old televisions, where one encounters broadcast’s of Liu Guoqiang’s “Flashbacks” and “Eat Apple”. The unadorned background, silently explicates the daily processes of time and eating, deconstructing the similar, reflecting on the irreversibility of the “narrative” in realistic thinking or philosophical enquiry.
As for the audiovisual narrative, Zhu Chang provides another possibility with “Tian Wai Fei Xian” (Flying Fairies in the Beyond), explicating the brave dreams of a young man’s heart, and how the imagery was realized only to come to an end in the sense of the ridiculous. In “Transplant”, the images, language, captions, and text are all deconstructed and reconnected, as if replanted, creating a different psychological reaction, and though one desires to explain it logically, in the end one is left with but a sense of listless helplessness.
As one proceeds to the second floor, one first encounters Liu Guoqiang’s installation “flashbacks 2”, relying on a mirror reflection, to reflect opposing images of clocks, which nicely correspond with the first floor narrative work in a clever tête-à-tête. For the artist, the reflection in the mirror symbolizes memory, and the time difference of the images.
This is followed by Liu Yue’s three “Echo” series photographic works, where to express the spatial sense of the exhibit the entire wall is painted black, the work is left with only the still and unadorned sense of a snowy night, as well as the outline of the object by the light after its kidnapping, like there is an amazing and incredible strength lurking. It is as if even the voice is sucked into that fleeting moment.
In today’s electronic high-tech world, audiovisual media still lack the somatosensory pleasure of the painting or sculpture one touches and encounters up close. Young artists elicit creative inspiration from their formative environment, using familiar media to create familiar works. The Asia Arts Center is committed to promoting the spirit of the Oriental arts and continuing to find and support the new emerging young artists, so we hope to enjoy your continued support.