Hualien Art Exhibition

The Shock of “Same Place in Different Time”！ (Hualien Art Award)

Shih-Yung KU / Member of “2021 Hualien Art Exhibition”Evaluation Committee

   The “A Faint Noise” by Yu-Ting Wang, the winner of Hualien Art Exhibition, is a video installation. While staying in the village at the estuary of Hualien Creek, the artist was surprised to stumbled upon the widening road nearby and excavated fragments of 4500-2500 years of prehistoric pottery, jade and stone. Anyone will be inexplicably shocked because of its huge and long distance in time and space! From the artist’s description, out of curiosity, she picked up a few fragments and placed them in the palm of her hand for a closer look. Then, she turned on the three-dimensional mode with the mobile app downloaded on the spot to scan and record 360 degrees before putting it back, since she knew well that if these thousand-year-old pottery pieces leave this original site, they will instantly lose the “aura” given by the time span. The artist’s adventure in this distance of time and space (present/prehistoric) gave birth to this “A Faint Noise” video installation, in which the “energy of time” is self-evident.
    The images used on the scene of this video installation work are all related to the place where she resides in the village at the estuary of Hualien Creek. The overall space installation is divided into two spaces for deployment, and clever use of a topographic map of the world open to the world from a private internet company, several screenshots near the top view of the Hualien Creek outlet, and then played back and forth to continuously approach the Hualien Creek. The satellite bird’s-eye topographic map of the estuary is suspended between the two spaces as a metaphorical channel for the interaction of time and space between the two spaces. One of the more open spaces has a set of dual-screen projection videos projected on the bamboo-frame rear projection screen on the left and right sides. The content of the image on the right is the above-mentioned exposure topographic map to indicate the height of the altitude with the strength of the exposure, which is calculated by the computer. The undulating topographical map of the horizon line, to put it simply, transforms the original asymptotic vocabulary from top to bottom, from far to near, into the horizon of adult life. As the video is in progress, from time to time, several video recordings of fishermen at the estuary of Hualien Creek currently catching eel fry at night in the HD mode of the digital micro-single camera are inserted. The image on the left is that the artist freezes the horizontal terrain model in the right image and outputs them in a still shot mode until the last image close to Hualien Creek meets the image near Hualien Creek that appears at the same time on the left. We finally find that the contrast from the distant abstract time and space to the short-lived life world is self-evident！
        Next, we enter another confined dark space. Around the wall, there are several 3D images placed on digital photo frames or LCD screens. The image content is some unearthed debris data obtained from the 360-degree shooting in the stereo mode of the mobile phone. The fragments of the ruins are all from the washing of time, and now they have undergone another bit of erosion, modeled by computer calculations into a complete 3D model, and then flattened and outputted. This means that the ruins are destroyed and disappeared from the scene instantly. Once the lost unearthed fragment has left the scene, its aura will be exiled and disappeared due to the irreversibility of time! At this time, the 50-inch screen on the end wall of the confined space is playing static images of unearthed fragments of the ruins, and two lines of orange and white narration text appearing on it. The white subtitles are one Archeologists narrated the status quo of excavations from today’s ruins, which summoned scene after scene about the reverberation of the ancient time in the brain! Another orange subtitle is the artist’s fictional body moving while telling the past. Before the GPS appeared, our body directly corresponds to the stars in the universe purely and romantically. Here the fictional power leads to the long past and the future. All will encounter again, but I don’t know which space-time coordinates will happen in the future？
          In general, the artist uses two interactive and superimposed contexts of internal and external space installations through the narrative method of image time and space. The outside is a spatial narrative of time wrinkles, and the inside is a time narrative of spatial wrinkles, and one side is a leisurely and irreversible. In the archaeological time, on one side is the black box data of digital ghosts, and the feelings of both of them are huge and unattainable unknown secrets, at this moment! Should we be able to realize that human beings are just one moment of the universe, given the sublime time？

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Short Comment on “Yu-Ting Wang's Work”  (Hualien Art Award)

Manray Hsu / Member of “2021 Hualien Art Exhibition”Evaluation Committee

    Hualien. From the perspective of Taiwan’s modern history, when the Western Plains gradually entered colonial rule since the 16th century, Hualien did not flood into the western region until the beginning of the 19th century, and was immediately incorporated into modern technological rule. For more than a hundred years, these late colonial regimes have built various infrastructures and brought the indigenous peoples here from high mountains, shallow mountains, and Caspian seas into repressive rule, with the exception of the Pingpu ethnic groups and Fujian immigrants in the west that had arrived earlier. There were even Japanese and mainland immigrants who followed in the footsteps of the colonial government. Finally, it cuts off the connection between this area and the marine civilization, and fully plays the role of the urban border. Now, this area has become the back garden of the western metropolis. The vast majority of people are gradually adapting to its unique life style of urbanization. It is a new world for new immigrants, tourists, backpackers and self-seeking young people, gradually one forget about its Modern history, but let alone its traces of ancient memory.
    Yu-Ting Wang’s work do not stay at the familiar Hualien, not because these “Hualien impressions” are unimportant and unreal. On the contrary, the artist is concerned about how to integrate the archaeological discoveries of the Stone Age and the intertidal zone of the estuary where humans and multiple species coexist with the new technology of the future. She used dynamic photography and 3D scanning to convert information about archaeological excavations and ecological activities in the Neolithic Age at estuary of Hualien creek, into dynamic static image installations, and reassembled these real fragments of time and space into poetic works. Viewers freely shuttle between the images of these gravels, huge rocks, waves, and artifacts, like fragments of dreams, whispering in a low voice, in contrast with the Godlike sea breeze, waves and boundless sky when facing the Pacific Ocean. Her work give everyone a Hualien one is beyond the ordinary.

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“A New Era of Hualien Art Exhibition-Huadong Aesthetics Inflame”

Sheau-Shei Pan / Member of “2021 Hualien Art Exhibition”Evaluation Committee (Chairman of Committee)

    Due to the changes in the competition, Hualien Art Exhibition has a brand-new development this year (2021). Starting from the official policy, opening the footsteps of Eastern contemporary art and mobilizing the creation and writing of Huadong’s aesthetics is no longer a wild phenomenon of dryness and prosperity. It lies in returning to life, taking the existing problem consciousness as the root, creating with modern media and technology. The works are no longer the allegory of personal beauty and spirituality, but more generally the expression of the social and cultural spiritual emotions of the entire history, which is closer to reality. All this is in sync with the world, allowing us to have a cheerful dialogue with human beings.
     The contestants of this year’s Hualien Award are for 129 art creators, 12 of them qualified for the preliminary review, and 6 of them became the representative works of the Hualien Art Exhibition. The competition is fierce. The six artists are Chih-Chi Tsai, Gieh-Wen Lin, Hui-Ying Tsai, Yu-Song Wang, Chin-Chih Lai, and Yu-Ting Wang. Chih-Chi Tsai explores the originality of painting, the connotation of the work and the placement of the site space; Gieh-Wen Lin uses the weaving of Drugu women to make a strong contrast with the industrial society, forming a wrestling force between witches and technology. Hui-Ying Tsai’s work combines traditional crafts and modern technology to compare the movement of Taiwanese people to the “Wind-Blown”; Yu-Song Wang fictionalizes a time story of the birth of Hualien; Chin-Chih Lai uses stacked stones to feel the land; Yu-Ting Wang uses images and digital art to express the current life in the east The relics of the past, the tremendous transformation of space-time energy, is exciting.
    There are three characteristics of this year’s art exhibition. One is youthfulness and contemporary spirit. The second is that both works and narrative are very strong. Finally come to the third is that the creators used the reflection and transformation of Hualien’s cultural ethnic group, natural environment, and historical time and space to become visual, readable, speculative, and imaginative high-quality works.

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“2021 Hualien Art Exhibition “  Reviewer’s Testimonials  

Manray Hsu / Member of “2021 Hualien Art Exhibition”Evaluation Committee

    Living in the era of globalization, we are witnessing the dialectical formation and rapid transformation of where it is international or local, we are part of it. Although some people go deep into the acceleration vortex of globalization, some people choose to stand on the edge of the vortex intentionally or unconsciously. Focusing on the trajectory of the long-term historical evolution of globalization, the migration path of the people, the overlapping landscape of self and ecology, and the locality as the starting and ending point of everything. 
    When the “Hualien Art Exhibition” changed from a local art exhibition to a national competition in 2016, again in 2018, it became an art competition focusing on Hualien’s contemporary creation project, and finally transformed into a global solicitation in 2021, focusing on local history and geography. At that time, it seemed to be the only artistic event in Taiwan in this era of globalization that stood outside the huge turmoil. And precisely because it chooses to stand on the edge of the times, it has achieved its own “Hualien Art Exhibition.”

    This time, the 6 winners, who stood out from 129 contestants from 8 countries, “came” to Hualien in their own unique ways, a kind of “herein” that belongs to the artist. They examine Hualien in different historical axes, in addition the personal experience or community involvement, and their creations have the characteristics of global contemporary arts that are not limited to media and styles. 
    Chih-Chi Tsai’s light and indifferent painting makes use of the relationship between the virtual and the reality of the works and the layout to capture the soul of an old industrial space that belongs to the present. Taroko artist Gieh-Wen Lin’s large-scale installation is based on Taiwan’s modern mining industry, entwining extractive colonialism between pan-Atayal weaving and ancestral beliefs. Hui-Ying Tsai’s work in the community of Hualien’s village is mixed with sound elements and songs from different histories and regions in recent times to construct a mysterious space-time capsule interactive installation. 
    Yu-Song Wang’s “Homecoming Letter (Notes)” veritably transformed his birthplace, an old hospital somewhere in the center of the city, into a realistic projection device in the exhibition space. Chin-Chih Lai was in Hualien City, an important source of marble. Various stones were found scattered randomly, traces of human existence, but these stones also have their own personalities and stubbornly lie on the ground. He signs their existence with a set of GPS. Yu-Ting Wang uses the archaeological site in Hualien estuary as a reference point. From the relics of prehistoric people’s life to the modern that still rely on the nature and the reality landscapes which link technology with ecology, they were integrated into a complex digital media installation.
    The above are my observations and comments as one of the review members.

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Remarks of Evaluation Committee of ”2021 Hualien Art Exhibition

Kit Lee / Member of “2021 Hualien Art Exhibition ”Evaluation Committee

    In unfamiliar places, what you can rely on may be curiosity about one’s own resistance, and then let yourself be at ease.

    When I was in Hualien, in addition to judging work, most of my time was chatting with different old and new acquaintances, and wandering around. Compared to the place where I usually live, the streets in Hualien are wider and there are fewer people, so you can walk all the time. The simple things I see on the roadside occasionally feel as if they are farther and clearer than usual. I have little experience in judging, so I am very curious about the whole process and the final exhibition results. Maybe this is also a viewing distance. In the three-stage judging process, you will become more and more familiar with the works of certain contestants.

    For example, Gieh-Wen Lin makes people look forward to, sculpture installations with expansive and explosive energy connects her behavior of placing herself in her cherished history and landscape; Hui-Ying Tsai’s perfect and thoughtful creative considerations present all kinds of listening and curious sound clips recorded during the sampling process; Yu-Song Wang’s flexible movement of light and shadow brings out his voice as a local person; Chi-Chi Tsai’s paintings not only make people stare, but the display method also with a clear rhythm of viewing and breathing, seem to make one nodding while wandering around; Chin-Chi Lai’s implicit, simple and playful sculptures alike, hand the results of labor back to the geographical factor (earthquake) to make the final decision, and then decide whether he will intervene again; Through images and 3D scanning, Yu-Ting Wang intends to reproduce the historical appearance of the coast that is almost impossible to reproduce, as if seeing a kind of research and execution motivation driven by curiosity to sort out the ambiguity.

    The six different groups of works finally form a complete and rich exhibition. In addition to understanding the entries, the management, coordinating and staff involved behind them should have more or less resistance and curiosity to the unknown. For things other than creation, if there are good intentions, sometimes the distance is not so far from the creation itself. Besides understanding, it’s probably all about watching.

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Remarks of Evaluation Committee of “Hualien Art Exhibition”

Ya-Lun Tao / Member of “2021 Hualien Art Exhibition ”Evaluation Committee

   

   From the local art exhibition to the contemporary international art exhibition, the Hualien Art Exhibition, this year 129 art creators from 8 countries participated and competed. The six shortlisted works depict contemporary themes such as body, behavior, memory, space, history, society, politics, virtuality, technology etc., contemporary art, with perspective of Hualien, depicting the diverse appearance of contemporary art.

    The work of the artist Yu-Ting Wang starts from the historical activities of the ancestors. By collecting, scanning, and displaying the remains of the stoneware and pottery at the estuary of Hualien Creek, it is an attempt to show that the earth is accumulating, scouring, and eroding. And the stretch of time texture and historical deposition.

    At the other end, in the open space of the exhibition hall, the recorded images and scan animations of the estuary of Hualien Creek, and the fishermen marched into the rough waves to catch the eel seedlings all night was shown. Such as a blink of time and the moments of condensation in the air. The energy of time and space has washed and eroded the traces of human activities. However, scanning and virtual energy reduce and erase the human temperature. Facing the huge historical river, Yu-Ting Wang attempts to completely seal, condense, and record the current life fragments of human beings with instant images and 3D scanning, like a drop in the ocean, showing a finite body, facing the body of infinite Dau.
   Starting from the history of Hualien, the artist Gieh-Wen Lin demonstrated powerful action and energy with a soft feminine posture. Fight against mechanical civilization and capital plunder with flesh and blood. With the power of one person, he attempts to heal the land of ancestors and the place of life that have been hit hard by industrial machinery violence, and heal the scars of the earth by himself. If a large-scale cutting machine like a surgical scalpel is used, it symbolizes male brutality. Gieh-Wen Lin’s weaving action in the ore field, healed the soul of the earth, showing the flexibility and delicacy of women. Gieh-Wen Lin’s works use strong willpower, active physical action, and enthusiasm to soothe the earth and change the political structure of reality.
    The artist Chin-Chih Lai uses cement blocks, bricks and other ready-made stone-filling actions, and the seemingly game-like sculpture objects are actually borrowing stone-filling behaviors to try to open up a debate about body, space, virtuality, and symbols. If we look back at the primitive rock-filling behavior of mankind from the perspective of archaeology, we regard everything as alive, and use the “natural stones” as a totem, worship the heaven and the earth, and create a spiritual stele-like “sacred object”, which becomes the space. Coordinates, guide the lost. On the other hand, Chin-Chih Lai, on the contrary, used his physical actions to collect “man-made construction waste” from all over Hualien, the “waste” from human predation of nature, industrialization, urban production, and consumption to pile rocks. Such behavior is like picking up and stacking the “Anthropocene” deposits on the most surface of the strata, in an attempt to reveal the “surplus value” and “residual temperature” after industrial production and consumption. The physical space on site is the physical space politics of willpower, physical labor, landscape and distance, and the “virtual coordinates” of the east longitude and north latitude of the rockfill site are marked on the wall, implying that every piece of “man-made construction waste” has the “virtual coordinates” of the original location. As a result, the rock-filling action carried out in the physical space reflects a parallel time and space, hiding a larger and potentially virtual city network, and forming an interactive questioning between the physical and virtual space politics.
    The artist Yu-Song Wang uses light, images, space, and ready-made objects to show the physical and spatial memories of his hometown Hualien. The old obstetrics and gynecology hospital has now become a music classroom, but the scenery and atmosphere in the hospital remain the same. Yu-Song Wang built a glass wall that mimics the delivery room. Slow and still images are projected on the wall. Projected text is used behind the wall to narrate the story of a fictional character who was born and grew up in Hualien, which is very poetic.
    In the era of virtual networks, artist Chih-Chi Tsai does not choose digital media, but uses paintings, canvases, space, light and shadow to explore the relationship between virtual images on the Internet and the current real space, opening a dialogue about time, memory, images, and space. The canvas develops like a camera film, using “residual”, “disappearing”, or “developing” paintings to summon the “coming images” and “fading images” in memory.
    The mountains and seas of Hualien have nurtured diverse cultures. Artist Hui-Ying Tsai took actions to visit every ethnic group and tribe, collected dialogues and music from residents, and created a “house” of common physical memory for Hualien by using floral fabrics, images, and sounds that reflect the daily life of the common people. This floating “house” also reflects the artist Hui-Ying Tsai’s long years living overseas and returning to Taiwan to settle after, a recognition of self-identity and return.

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 Members of Evaluation Committee (Arranged by the surname stroke order.)

• Kit Lee / Hong Kong artist, representative of Hong Kong Pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale

• Manray Hsu / Independent Curator

• Ya-Lun Tao / Professor and digital content technology Chairman of College of Communication, National Chengchi University

• Sheau-shei Pan (Chairman of Committee) / Professor of National Dong Hwa University, former Curator of Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei.

• Shih-Yung Ku / Professor of Graduate Institute of Plastic Arts and former Dean of College of Visual Arts, Tainan Nation University of the Arts