TAIPEI.- The 22nd edition of
Art Taipei will be open to public from tomorrow, 30th October to 2nd November at the Taipei World Trade Center. During these four days, 168 galleries from 20 countries and territories will present over 3000 modern and contemporary artworks by leading artists from Taiwan and abroad. Alongside the continued strong presence of galleries from Taiwan and returning international galleries, the fair will be joined by 38 new exhibitors from Asia and around the world, including Hong Kong and Mainland China, Japan, Southeast Asia, Europe and the United States.
As the longest standing and one of the most important art fairs in Asia, ART TAIPEI continues to push boundaries and strives to make breakthroughs. For the 2015 edition, ART TAIPEI encompasses the entirety of the Taipei World Trade Centre for the first time, and has invited local young architects Hom Liou and Bruce Wang from WOOYO to design the exhibition space. WOOYO uses their distinct contemporary architectural language and a cross-border vision of art to turn the exhibition hall into a large-scale organic artwork through the application of elements like sound, video and space design. A group of large-scale public artworks is placed at iconic locations throughout the fair, presenting the diversity of contemporary art in the Asia-Pacific region.
Over the past 21 years, ART TAIPEI has become an important platform for emerging artists. In addition to the Future and 「Made in Taiwan」sections, this year’s ART TAIPEI collaborates with Jaguar Taiwan for the first time to host the Jaguar Asia Tech Art Prize, awarding leading emerging artists in the field of new media. Owaki Richi was announced as the winner of the prize at the press conference today and was awarded a NT$ 1 million prize by James from Jaguar and Rick Wang, Chairman of the Taiwan Art Gallery Association. The other 4 shortlisted artists Llunc Lin, Mohri Yuko, Vatanajyankur Kawita and Yao Chung-Han will also receive a NT$100,000 prize for their outstanding submissions. All five works will be showcased at ART TAIPEI for the next four days.
Ongoing Highlights from the Four Main Sections; the Premiere Section challenges the senses of the audience
ART TAIPEI 2015 introduces four main sections and the Public section. The main Galleries section features 133 galleries, presenting a selection of artworks in various media, many of which are on show for the first time in Taiwan. The Public Art section showcases large-scale art pieces throughout the venue, and also extends the exhibition hall to the square to the north to Taipei 101. The Premiere section presents works both created in the last three years and works that have never been shown in Taiwan. In this section, INNO ART (Taiwan) presents Gu Wenda’s controversial work from the Metamorphoses series, which uses human hair to weave imagined English, Chinese and Arabic words, addressing global issues of cross-border cultural identity. The Frontier section, dedicated to new and multimedia art, presents seven Taiwan-based and international galleries. Silverlens (Manila, Singapore), which joins ART TAIPEI for the first time, presents Filipino artist Martha Atienza’s video work Study in Reality No. 4, leading the audiences the explore the natural environment changing from a different perspective. The Future section highlights the views of today's artistic creation through curated solo shows of emerging artists by galleries outside Taiwan. Lastly, Made in Taiwan, a section organized by the Ministry of Culture, is dedicated to presenting local emerging artists.
The Future Section: finding the next ‘Pride of Asia’
The Future section and ‘Made in Taiwan’ section are dedicated to a particularly strong showcase of emerging artists from around the world with solo exhibitions, presenting a comprehensive overview of their artistic talents and breadth. Participating galleries in the Future section include AIKE-DELLARCO (Shanghai), Equator Art Project (Magelang, Singapore), Gallery Irritum (Daegu), H Gallery (Jakarta), Richard Koh Fine Art (Kuala Lumpur), STANDING PINE(Nagoya), Vin Gallery (Ho Chi Ming) and Wei-Ling Gallery (Kuala Lumpur). In the meantime, the MIT section selected eight local artists under 35, including Chen Pei Xin, Chung He-Hsien, Fan Sih-Ci, Huang Ko Wei, Huang Po Hsun, Lin Yu-Chun, Tseng Chien-Ying and Zhang Xu Zhan. These artists represent the exploration of the young generation with different materia ls, themes and textures within their artworks. These leading emerging artists come from various cultural backgrounds and the preesntation will reveal a diverse landscape of Asian art through their works showcased at the fair.
The Public Art Section: showcasing work by the Golden Lion Award winning artist and important works from biennales
In the Public Art section this year, ART TAIPEI invited local and international artists to present special public artworks at dedicated spaces throughout the venue. Galerie Urs Meile (Beijing, Lucerne) and German artist Tobias Rehberger, who was the winner of the Golden Lion for Best Artist in 2009 at the 53rd edition of the Venice Biennale, will showcase his installation work Die Welt kurz vor Erfindung des tiefen Tellers, in which the entire room and objects are covered with pink and yellow tiles to create a visually psychedelic space. The work is representative of Rehberger’s intersectional exploration of art, architecture and design; Tezukayama Gallery (Osaka) and Japanese artist Tomohiro Kato’s project focuses on the artist’s reflection on art and Japanese society after the 311 earthquake. In the work Steel Tearoom Tettei, eve ry component is made of steel and the title of the work translates to ‘Complete’ in Japanese, referring to the artist’s full dedication to art. During the fair, visitors can have Japanese green tea in the room and listen to the introduction to the work. Outside the fair at the square by Taipei 101, an installation of Taiwanese boar sculptures by local artist Chi-Lan Pa Hao Lan and TICA Art Space (Taiwan), and a project by Chinese artist Jiao Xingtao and Chini Gallery (Taiwan) will be featured.
Contemporary and Modern Masterpieces: high-quality paintings to draw collectors
This year, a group of galleries bring a high quality selection of Modern works to the audience. Highlights include Marc Chagall and Salvador Dali’s works at Opera Gallery (Singapore, Paris, Hong Kong, London, Dubai, Seoul, Monaco, Miami) and REDSEA Gallery (Singapore, Brisbane); Zou Wou-ki’s important work from the 60s 30-7-64 at Lin&Lin Gallery (Taiwan); and Floating Clouds by US-based Taiwanese artist Yang Chi-Hung presented by Asia Art Center (Taiwan).
Art Reflects Global Affairs: from prominent cultural issues to everyday life in one glance
Other highlights of the fair include: Galleria Continua’s (Beijing, San Gimignano, Les Moulins, Habana) presentation of Algerian-French artist Kader Attia’s work chaos+repair=universe. The surface is mended with iron wires, creating an infinite reflection of interior space using mirrors and indicating the endless loop of chaos and recovery in the history of human culture. Tokyo Gallery+BTAP (Tokyo, Beijing) invited artist Chiharu Nishizawa to create an artwork on site during the fair. The busy scenes in his paintings reveal the artist’s concern that contemporary people are content with the status quo and always ignore potential issues that may arise in the future. Leading local gallery Tina Keng Gallery (Taiwan) showcases pioneer video artist Yuan Goang-Ming’s work Landscape of energy, which was sele cted as the main visual of the 13th Biennale de Lyon, along with the artist Su Yu-Hsien’s work Hua-shan-qiang, which won the 12th edition of the TaishinArts Award. The video is taken in the perspective of the ‘golden boy and jade girl’ (a couple of paper dolls from the traditional funeral custom), thus discussing the views of life and death found in traditional culture.
At the four-day ART TAIPEI 2015, Taiwanese galleries are joined by leading regional and international galleries to explore new trends in Modern and contemporary Asian art.
