A Peep Into Contemporary Taiwanese Photography

DURATION: 2005-11-05 ~ 2005-12-17
OPENING: 2005-11-05
VENUE: Taipei MOMA Gallery

Introduction Photography has become a principal media of Chinese contemporary art in recent years. The international art community has paid special attention to the photographic art development in Taiwan. In the 1970s and early 80s, people in Taiwan, still ruled by the KMT party under the long standing martial law, woke up from the isolated environment and started changing their focus to domestic related topics rather than focus on mainland China. As a result, many photographic works in the 70s and 80s were influenced by the Domestic Art Movement in Taiwan. Many works were related with social and political issues. Martial law ended in the late 1980s and the society started to release its hidden power. Documentary became the mainstream photographic art. Since 1990, a new generation of experimental art was developing. Photography represents contemporary art standing on the central stage. However, artists in Taiwan tend to reflect on controversies of local society and politics in their works. Nine artists in this exhibition all picked up different aspects of Taiwanese society and created their works using diverse points of view. Artists Chen Chieh-Jen陳界仁 digitally altered black and white photographs of torture scenes that act as commentary on colonization and the gaze of the oppressor. In his recent film work he links physical torture scenes of the body in pain with that of economic strangulation of a nation in the age of globalization. Currently based in New York, Magnum photographer Chang Chien-Chi張乾琦 is known for his series titled The Chain, black and white photo documentation of psychiatric inmates chained together in pairs at the infamous Lung-fa-tang asylum in Taiwan. Chen Shun-Chu’s 陳順築 photographic installations bring to mind the work of French author Marcel Proust. Like Proust, Chen is also searching for lost time. Chen tackles the deep metaphysical issues of life and death poetically, yet with the distancing effect via the use of photographic technology. Chen’s recollection is in black and white, as achromatic images have a tone of authority telling the viewer this is a factual image; this is the truth. Even though recapturing the past is fleeting, Chen reminds us that the desire for remembering the past is also a desire for the life well-lived. Hung Tung-Lu洪東祿 is the only Taiwanese artist who has done an Absolut ad. Working with lenticulars, Hung creates futuristic scenes that combine Manga images with traditional Chinese temples. In the Nirvana series, he imagines an idyllic life in the future, which is a feature of much contemporary Taiwanese art. The nostalgia for the past is overshadowed by an incredible desire for a brighter tomorrow. Peng Hung-chih 彭弘智 creates humorous drawings, sculptures, interactive installations, performances and videos mainly featuring the dog, as the dog becomes the metaphor for us.Peng previously worked with wind-up toys - shiny, plastic, absurd, obsolete, throwaway – to convey themes of futility and pessimism to reflect on the current global economic situation. Toys are common and represent the majority voice, yet are also receptacles for one’s hopes and feelings. And as a child with no sense of history, the toy, just like the pet dog, creates a link to the world of pure imagination, a world void of the dystopia of capitalism and social surveillance, a complete unadulterated place, which Peng so craves to recapture through his art. Tsui Kuang-yu崔廣宇 gained immediate recognition for his single-channel performative videos in which he, as both director and filmed subject, showed the absurdity of contemporary life in a Buster Keaton-meets-Chinese-Kung-fu-masters-metaphysical kind of way. Based on scientific principles such as mimicry and adaptation, Tsui’s work also refers to the social body as organism.In The Shortcut to the Systematic Life: City Spirits (2005), shot in London and Taipei, the artist turns the urban environment into a sports arena. He rolls a bowling ball at a flock of pigeons gathered in a plaza, waves a checkered flag alongside cars stopped at a light, and swings a golf club on a patch of urban green. In Penetration: The Penetrative, the artist addresses the limitations of the body by running directly into immovable objects such as the side of a train, a wall, and a water buffalo. Wu Tien Chang 吳天章made a smooth transition from political-based mural-sized paintings to digital prints evoking the burlesque and vernacular culture of Taiwan of the mid-twentieth century. Again that wistful nostalgia for the past, for the favor3ite Taiwanese love songs, for the famous local movie stars crops up in his staged photographic settings. Yuan Goang-ming袁廣鳴works in digital media, allowing the medium to become the message. In his series Human Disqualified, his digitally-altered photographs of Taipei’s bustling Hsimin District that is stripped of pedestrians and vehicles, an absence of life, an eerie and disturbed city, becomes a powerful statement of our contemporary life. The highly versatile and prolific Yao Jui-Chung 姚瑞中publishes books, curates shows, and exhibits his photographs, drawings and installations. His drawings and photographic performances present a biting social commentary on what it is like to be a Taiwanese in the shadow of the mainland.