by Lily Wu
Change & Chance is a four-day annual class exhibition from the NTUE (National Taipei University of Education) Arts & Design department. It launched on April 11th at art gallery space Venue, featuring a diverse collection of students’ paintings, photographs, prints and installations on the 3rd floor, and a new-media-focused collection on the 5th floor.
Student's work, photograph by Lily Wu
The NTUE Arts & Design department has been known for its students’ diverse backgrounds: the ratio of students who have received fine arts education in high school to those who haven’t is 1:10, according to publicity team leader, Yu-Chi Tsai. “Fine arts program students are bound to a certain way of thinking much owing to their training, but here, we don’t have that,” said Tsai. This quality of free thinking is perhaps best demonstrated by a rich variety of media that ranges from oil paint to an Arduino processor in this exhibition.
In a corner on the 3rd floor, the piece “All the Reasons for Having No Choice but to…” (所有的不得不的原因), co-created by Chang, Liu, and Chen, shows a scene in a 30-minute silent video, composed of a leisure table where a book, newspapers, and a paint palette scattered along with leftover cookies and tea. The viewer is then presented with the retro CRT television on the side of what seems to be the remainder of an afternoon tea session left by the trio. Through the image of remnants, this piece consisting of performance art and installation explores the relation between an activity and the space in which the activity takes place. It also provokes the viewers’ thoughts upon the relation between the watched and the watching when they gaze at the seemingly regular activities shown on the screen, thus initiating a communication. “When an artist works with one another, they have to get out of their comfort zones,” said Yi-Chia Chen, one of the creators of the piece, “the connection built during the process of a project among the artists is priceless,” emphasizing how collaborations between peers often lead to surprising results.
In a corner on the 3rd floor, the piece “All the Reasons for Having No Choice but to…” (所有的不得不的原因), co-created by Chang, Liu, and Chen, shows a scene in a 30-minute silent video, composed of a leisure table where a book, newspapers, and a paint palette scattered along with leftover cookies and tea. The viewer is then presented with the retro CRT television on the side of what seems to be the remainder of an afternoon tea session left by the trio. Through the image of remnants, this piece consisting of performance art and installation explores the relation between an activity and the space in which the activity takes place. It also provokes the viewers’ thoughts upon the relation between the watched and the watching when they gaze at the seemingly regular activities shown on the screen, thus initiating a communication. “When an artist works with one another, they have to get out of their comfort zones,” said Yi-Chia Chen, one of the creators of the piece, “the connection built during the process of a project among the artists is priceless,” emphasizing how collaborations between peers often lead to surprising results.
Student's work, photograph by Lily Wu
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“the connection built during the process of a project among the artists is priceless,” --- Yi-Chia Chen First arriving at the 5th floor, a viewer might think they were in some high-tech room where advanced technological concepts in sci-fi movies were possible. “To Your Heart” (走進你的心) is an installation combining a manikin torso wearing a heart-looking device with a projector. The description tells the viewer to “come a little closer” and when they do, tiny hearts burst out on the screen. Using an Arduino processor and proximity sensors, the piece challenges the viewers’ conception of the distance between a viewer and an artwork by presenting what resembles a cybernetic system. On the other side of the room is “Boom!” The piece is a video game in which a participant plays with a joystick to throw bombs; when the target is hit, a Mickey Mouse face pops out. Didn’t see that coming, huh? A theme of globalization is emphasized as the face of Mickey Mouse expands infinitely.
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On the exhibition plaque, Kenji Miyazawa’s Night on the Galactic Railroad is cited, telling that “[the ticket] will take you higher than the sky!” And with it “you’ve got safe conduct to anywhere your heart desires to go.” Looking back at the theme: Change & Chance, then, a rather hopeful message is signified: the “ticket” initiates a new start and the unexpected following it. In this sense, it stands for something similar to a norm breaker, continually opening up possibilities for its holders.
When asked about the theme, chief executive Tsung-Hui Lin, who held curatorial and management roles in the exhibition, said it was “more about the people rather than the artworks,” explaining how everyone in the class was just working on their own without much interaction before this exhibition set off. “I saw the need to subvert the situation, which is why I took this job in the first place,” said Lin,“and that was the change for us.” |
Student's work, photograph by Lily Wu
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