Department of Cultural Affairs

By Psyche Cho
Staff Reporter

Seven active European artists have been invited to showcase some of their best digital creations in Taipei, in the hopes of exploring the feature of ‘performance’ in contemporary art, curator Ada Yang said in an opening ceremony for the exhibition May 7 in Taipei.

Titled ‘New Narrative’, the show is dedicated to two major themes, ‘Video’ and ‘Digital Images & Sculpture’. The works are now on display in the Digital Art Center, Taipei (DAC) and will run until June 12.

German photographer Rut Blees Luxemburg has brought a sample of her work personally to Taiwan. In In Deeper and Towering Inferno, she reveals aspects of her long-term investigation into the relationship between people and the cities in which they live.

In a forum following the opening ceremony, Luxemburg shared her ideas on creativity with attendees.

“I’m more interested in abstraction rather than any attachment among people,” explained the frequent award-winning artist. “Portrayal is never my favorite theme,” added Luxemburg, “I want to go beyond that and seek more possibilities.”

“There is a charm working at night,” noted Luxemburg, an artist who specializes in capturing images that most people are unaware of in a city at night.

German sculptor Matti Isan Blind has planned a ten-day stay in Taiwan, an approach that has given birth to Piercing through the Sulfur Fumes We Are All Feeling Audacious Again, the only site-specific work in this exhibition.

Mechanical art applied to peanuts, 3-D images, and cups made of gesso or clay are employed in this piece, and all combine to reflect the artist’s perspective of Taipei City.

The ‘Video’ section includes five other artists’ works, each of which explores specific issues through different approaches. German artist John Bock’s Im Scatten der Made, a silent film in Neo-dada style, relates concepts of acceptance, prejudice, alienation and love.

UK-based artist Claire Hooper tries to examine ancient Greece’s concept of night, delving into symbols of sleep, death, illusion and oblivion in her work Nyx.

Using 4-D technology and a montage approach in his work Faith in Infrastructure, versatile US artist Hilary Koob-Sassen takes viewers on a journey in search of the structure of a real/surreal world.

Colombian visual artist Oswaldo Macia presents a six-minute black-and-white film titled Equilibrium in which a performer tries to balance himself as his body tangling with a ten-meter long white cloth, along with the sounds of a bat dubbed in the background.

Renowned Swiss artist Christoph Draeger’s work Schizo is a remake of Psycho, a mix of suspense movie master Alfred Hitchcock’s work in 1960s and Gus Van Sant’s work of the same name in the 1990s. His installation attempts to uncover the aesthetics that lurk behind digital art.

Holding to the belief that technological art is not merely a genre using skill to fulfill visual possibilities, but rather the idea behind creativity, Yang hopes viewers will be able to develop a new narrative while visiting the exhibition.