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Photo Credit: Ze Wei
(Non) Existent Past －Artists Exchange Group Exhibition
2021/04/08
● Open Time／11:00-18:00
● Opening Reception／4.10(Sat.)15:00
● Venue／Taipei Artist Village, Barry Room
● Artists／LIU Yun-Yi, LI Cheng-Liang
Taipei Artist Village selects more than ten Taiwanese artists to participate in the three-month residency abroad in organizations worldwide every year. The first exchange artists exhibition at Barry Room in 2021, (Non) Existent Past, invited curator Ho, Yu-Kuan as the exhibition consultant, making a start for the artists' exchange group exhibition. The exchange organizations of artist villages span across Asia, Europe, Oceania, and other countries. This year, the exhibition will be showing the projects and works inspired by local history, culture, geography. Besides bringing a complete end to the entire residential creative journey, the exhibition also creates a chance for the viewers to follow the artists to several places in this world, enjoy the experiences of the journey together when viewing their artworks and projects.
Exhibition (Non) Existent Past is presenting the works of Li Cheng-Liang and Liu Yun-Yi, two artists who visited The Bank ART1929 in Yokohama and Manchester, UK respectively in 2019 and 2020.
During their residencies, the two artists embarked from their personal creative contexts and explored the relationship between themselves and local history or daily sceneries, which led to imagined imageries of the local landscape. Li Cheng-Liang found inspiration from his strolls on the streets of Yokohama and created an imaginary world through the sci-fi scenes based on Japanese popular culture. Liu Yunyi travelled to the Isle of Sheppey and captured images of the wounded geography in the context of its natural history and traces left behind by warfare. Although the works illustrate the slightly different creative mindsets of the artists, both tackle the differences in our imaginations of the past. The exhibition is a contrasting display of the disparity between material exploration and psychological fantasy. The two artists collected the sceneries of (non)existent pasts through touch and sight, walking along the shores and harbors, continuing onward.
Yokohama is a Japanese port located on the edge of the island. Li Cheng-Liang’s large scale work illustrates the profile of a beast rising in the distance, the crimson sky reflected on the water surface of Yokohama port. The buildings at the side of the port seem to be in a scene from a disaster movie, while the ceramics designed as Godzilla transform the mundane into sci-fi imaginations. Li will be presenting the works created during this residence, which were inspired by sceneries and beasts from Japanese sci-fis, constructing a sci-fi of his own. Li connects the creative process of ceramics to the birth of the monster, associating the buildings and objects from his everyday walks with scenes from films. Li’s works sway between mundane presentness and the scientific fantasy of the past, placing new narratives into everyday settings.
During her residency, Liu Yun-Yi visited the Isle of Sheppey, a disconsidered battlefield surrounded by sea and located near the Thames Estuary. The geology of the Isle of Sheppey made it possible for clay soil to be preserved, while the surroundings of the island show traces of past warfare. By collecting and sorting the historical traces of the land, Liu reorganizes and pieces the past together by inspecting the local geology. The works displayed in this exhibition are pertinent to the artist’s longstanding creative theme of wounded landscapes and discloses how trauma roots in traces of war and military buildings and how they continue to affect the land and its people. By shining a light on the past that haunts physical buildings, Liu repeatedly reflects on the frustrations and defeats of history through materials, architecture, maps, and space. Here, the artist’s works become connections and archives into past traumas.
Exhibition (Non) Existent Past will be presented between April 1st,2021 to May 2nd, 2021 at Taipei Artist Village. Through artists Li Cheng-Liang and Liu Yun-Yi's projects, will lead the viewers to see the different perspectives of the two artists, interpretations of the shore with its surroundings, scenes that meet the eye, objects that are perceived through touch, and contemplations and reflections of the past.