National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts

This exhibition adopts “Wonder of Fantasy” as the curatorial theme. With the seventeen foreign works and three Taiwanese works in this exhibition, we expect to demonstrate various ways of image presentation facilitated by advanced projection technology, to demonstrate the visualized montage, and thereby provide images with a spatial dimension of existence. By highlighting the spatial dimension of images, we should no longer regard image appreciation as merely an activity exists between images and audience. Rather, we should also take the space of exhibition venue (specific architectural space, museums, etc.) into consideration when we admire images. This Catalogue contains curitorial essays, feature essay, and work description, artist CV.

Wong Ting-Hua is an important documentary photographer in Taiwan. His career started during the realist movement that took place in Taiwan in the 1960s; through topic-based series, Wong photographed his hometown Keelung and daily lives of those living in the surrounding areas, creating a long-term local photographic documentary. With excellent observation and concerns of social environment, Wong has created valuable photographic works and historic records for the local life and social transitions of northeast Taiwan. In 1963, Wong Ting-Hua visited Jiufen, which was already beyond its prime, and discovered that Jiufen’s tranquil atmosphere and sense of time were perfect themes for his photographs. Since he was captivated by Jiufen’s misty and rainy climate when he first visited the place, Wong Ting-Hua’s “Mountain Town of Jiufen” series was given the unique misty atmosphere and solitary character of Jiufen. Wong delicately captured the cultural landscapes and lifestyle of Jiufen, internalizing his own experience of Jiufen and passion about local soils into photos with profound poetry. Wong’s calm and realistic camera angles and the aged and isolated sceneries echo each other, making his photographs full of nostalgia and sentiments. From the people in Wong’s pictures, as well as the serene aged sceneries, we can discover his ability to explore things neglected by people, as well as his grass root approach. The details captured and atmosphere created in this series display a simple and serene quality. Having had frequent visits to Jiufen for shooting during day, night, and different seasons, Wong Ting-Hua returned to Jiufen in 2006 to photograph the landscapes and places he had previously recorded through his lenses with a mission to act as the witness of changes of time. Because at the age of 80, with a career in photography spanning over five decades, Wong Ting-Hua believes that “the people living on this land have the responsibility and duty to make records for this age.” He has also passed on this belief to many of his students, striving to create more images for Taiwan. The core values to Wong’s documentary photography are witnessing history and recording life; with this spirit, Wong leaves behind his footprints of trips to Jiufen carrying his camera on the pieces of seemingly undried silver halide photos that depict rainy sceneries. In 2011, Wong Ting-Hua donated seventy photographs of the “Mountain Town of Jiufen” series to National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts. To pay tribute to his generosity, the Museum organizes the “Days in Jiufen 1963-2006: Photo Exhibition by Wong Ting-Hua”, so that people can get to know more about this photographer, who is still active as a photographer and teacher, and appreciate the misty and poetic old times of Jiufen captured by his camera. In order to exhibit the seventy photographs in the series in a more structured presentation, the exhibition features four sections: “Days of the Mountainous Town”,“Images of Life“Daily Entertainments”, and “Moments in the Corners”. In addition to highlight the unique style of the series through the four sub-themes, we also hope to paint a clearer outline of Wong Ting-Hua’s documentary photographic works through this type of planning and analysis.

Taiwan and Korea share many similarities in terms of geographic locations as well as political, economic, social and cultural conditions which can be seen often projected in the arts and culture, contributing significantly to the diversity and profound creativity of arts in both nations. However, despite those similarities, Taiwan and Korea have developed rather different artistic landscapes due to their different cultural backgrounds and traditions, among other factors. The different artistic visions and styles can be seen in the two exchange exhibitions, curated respectively by the Seoul Museum of Art and the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts. Whereas “Korean Paintings Now”, which was held last year, focused on the development of Korean painting since the 1960s, “Rolling! Visual Art in Taiwan” showcases works by Taiwanese artists also in the post-1960s era, looking especially at significant trends and important transition in post-war Taiwanese art history. In so doing, this exhibition can be seen to attest to the development of visual arts in Taiwan in the last half a century.“Rolling! Visual Art in Taiwan” showcases works by a diverse selection of established Taiwanese artists of the post-war era. The artists whose works are selected for this exhibition are all aged between 40 and 80 and still practicing art at present time. Albeit from different generations, these artists all vehemently pursue the big questions of their time while also place great emphasis on individual visions. The works featured in this exhibition can be seen to exemplify important artistic styles and approaches in various periods of Taiwanese art history, including abstract paintings rich in the artistic vocabulary of Eastern aesthetics, which represent Taiwan's Modernist Art Movement, and contemporary works which, inspired by the legacy of the Native Movement of the 1970s, reflect on broader issues related to local experience, social conditions, gender politics, environmental concerns and questions of being and identity.We are pleased that “Korean Painting Now” has been successful in garnering public attention and generating discussion in Taiwan. We do hope that “Rolling! Visual Art in Taiwan” will equally help the Korean public gain a better understanding of the current trends, artistic philosophies and the overall concerns of today's practicing Taiwanese artists. We hope that the exchange exhibitions will not only help us better understand the arts, culture and society of each other, but also help each other stimulate creativity and innovation in future art practice. Finally, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to Dr. Kim Hong-hee, Director of the Seoul Museum of Art and all the staff of the Museum for their dedication and exceptional efforts in making the exchange exhibition project possible.

It has been 10 years since the “Young Artist Collection” project was launched by the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts in 2003. As of 2012, 676 works by 456 artists have been collected through it. These artworks have not only enriched the NTMoFA’s collections, but are also the foundation of our research and display of younger-generation art.

Tony Cragg is a highly-acclaimed British sculptor and his work is also well recognized internationally. His choice of materials and dedication to the aesthetic forms has not only won him the British “Turner Prize” in 1988, but also an invitation to the British Pavilion in the Venice Biennale. In 2010, he was the first artist to have a solo exhibition held at the Louvre Museum. The National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, working with the British Council, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, and Holtermann Fine Art, is proud to present Tony Cragg’s first large-scale solo exhibition in Taiwan. Tong Cragg’s sculptures are diverse and full of styles and meanings from his different stages in life. This exhibition showcases his most recognized classic series on the organic elements and vitality of life, including 49 sculptures and 130 paper drafts to demonstrate the artist’s creative thought process. Tony Cragg’s sensitivity in different materials presents his delivery to the subtle material changes under the process of human manipulation. Over the years, his sculpture forms and materials have covered a wide range of facets including sociology, psychology, natural science, and biology etc.; though his charm remains pure both in motivation and style. Cragg, born in Liverpool, is currently professor of the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in Germany. His passion for art and curiosity for knowledge have created a rich variety of art styles, and such organic and streamlined creative arts are the main focus of this exhibition. The artist has redefined the physical form of the traditional sculptures, and his experiments with new materials created new meanings and emphasized the variability of materials: How human thoughts, emotions, moods, sensation, and other abstract elements could influence the sculptured form. These hidden layers under the material – psychological, physical, and social aspects – are unearthed and represented in the unique forms of his sculptures. A constant stream of vitality is sourced from the different materials, between the concrete and the abstract, among the known and unexplored. His sculptures are organic in nature and seemingly continue to evolve in all directions of life. Seeing through the artist’s eyes, the interpretation is rich and diverse in response to his attitude of the materialistic social meaning of the contemporary lifestyles.

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Asian Art Biennale, an art event organized by National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts (NTMoFA), has established three years ago. As for the Asian Art and Curator's Forum, it presents academic studies on the development of art based upon each region’s particularity from the perspectives of curators, art critics, or scholars. Through a multi-dimensional viewpoint, the regional quality of each culture may be revealed and further experienced, allowing each of us to perceive an interactive and yet multi-cultural concept of Asia.

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