Yingge Ceramics Biennale Slide Show

The opening of the 2010 Taiwan Ceramics Biennale this weekend at the Yingge Ceramics Museum was chock-full of exciting events including huge mascot-like characters dancing to a techno version of traditional Taiwanese music.  Huh?  Yeah, there's a lot to share, but for now I will satisfy your interest visually with a little slideshow and coming soon will be  more in-depth coverage of my experience from the  behind-the-scenes set-up to the closing discussion of the coinciding symposium: "Is international ceramics competition dead but not yet lying down?"  Mmmmmmm . . . .  nourishment for your intellect!

Please visit my flickr site to see more of Taiwan through my camera lens!

YODEX Taipei

I think that a signature of good design is that it needs little translation.  Although each artist’s or designer’s display at the 2010 Young Designers’ Exhibition (YODEX) in Taipei had its titles and information printed in Mandarin and English, I found those whose message or function was understood simply through the design of the object and method of display to be the most memorable.  I’m not sure if this has to do with a complete inability to read Mandarin, or the exhaustive nature of translation, but the mode of contemporary culture seems to want an immediacy and deftness of communication that was answered in those designs whose necessity is apparent within the first few seconds of viewing. 

If you’ve ever seen those little green foam protective covers on fruit, then you’d understand this designer’s desire to beautify function.  This is one student’s design.  Thousands of students participate in YODEX. Around 60 universities from Taiwan and 22 international universities participate in this exhibition occupying two entire exhibition halls at the Taipei World Trade Center adjacent to the landmark Taipei 101 building.  I was invited to go by my residency host, Chih Wei, whose alma mater, National Yunlin University of Science and Technology was represented.  She explained to me that each student’s work was chosen by jury, and most of the students who were given the opportunity to exhibit were showing what would be considered their thesis work.  Some of the work was by non-graduating students, but this is unusual because of the time, resources and funding that goes into it. 

Each University represented a specific department with in their school.  By specific, I also mean unique and uber niche; for example, Dayeh University represented their Department of Plastic Art. Other departments included Multimedia and Game Science, Multimedia and Entertainment Science, Digital Content and Animation Design, Techno-Craft Design, Styling and Cosmetology, Technological Product Design, Fashion Imaging; and, of course, Industrial Design, Arts and Design, Visual Communication Design, etc.  Within almost every School and Department we toured, we found ceramics!  Yea!  And, duh.  Taiwan has an extremely rich history in that regard, and in the contemporary designs, historical references appeared here and there. Here is Chih Wei standing in front of an elaborate display of various ceramic designs.  The light behind her actually looks like Ming Dynasty porcelain inside—a simple, pleasing design idea that actually brings the idea, as opposed to the material, of traditional ceramics into industrial design. 

Another designer recognizes the need for compact, all-in-one dishware while catering to traditional Taiwanese food.  Steamed soup-dumplings have actually become one of my favorite eats and here. They are little pasta pouches filled with cabbage and pork soup that you dip into a soy and ginger sauce, and place on your spoon, then you break the noodle membrane letting it mix with the soy and slurp the whole thing into your mouth.  Yum.  The designer has replaced the wooden steam box on the right with a personalized set of ceramic ware that stacks up neatly, chopsticks too, into a single object with graceful curves (you can see a little illustration in black of the stack on a card just below the wooden steam-box). 

The designers’ products and displays ran the gamut of what can be considered art, design, craft and visual communication in every material imaginable.  Some focused on “Green” design, some on the design of new objects, some on packaging design, some on the design of an experience in which objects and images were like supportive props, and some focused on purely conceptual objects.  Digital images, animation and computer programming constituted a considerable amount of the exhibition space as well, but since I’m an object maker fascinated by material and its plead for innovation, my attention was swayed by presentations satisfying my interests. 

A tennis court squeegee, in which dead tennis balls are cut and inserted into a reservoir using their interior rubber to create the water-pushing part of the implement, was an example of environmentally conscious design, or “thinking green”. 

An alarm clock in the form of a potted cactus doesn’t seem all that innovative until it is understood that in order to turn off the alarm, the waking must find the sprig of needles that is the off/snooze button.  Not so easy to slip back to sleep after that, eh? 

The tennis squeegee and cactus alarm were quietly presented accompanied by simple illustrations, however, that wasn’t the case with all designs.  Innovation in the design and packaging of cotton swabs was nearly secondary to the theatricality of its presentation.  The walls of this booth were decorated with the cotton swabs in a way that created a soft, bas-relief lace pattern, and the girls promoting their designs donned frilly white dresses covered in the same.  Oh, and lets not for get the cotton tiaras.  Chih-wei informed me that many Taiwanese are fans of Japanese culture, and this kind of sickeningly cute and girly celebration is very Japanese in nature.  Interestingly, even at a prestigious national design exhibition, the girls’ product and persona was more than acceptable, it was lively, fun, popular and successful.  I was smiling and excited about cotton swabs and so was everyone else that inquired about their designs!

Another popular booth was an entire immigration center for a fictional “Taipei Republic”.  Complete with a silly form to fill out and a nonsensical quiz to take before your identification card picture was taken.  It was free to receive your I.D. card via e-mail, and a printed souvenir would set you back a nominal sum.  I have yet to receive mine, but I haven’t checked the junk mailbox yet.  Other souvenirs were for purchase as well such as handmade soap with the image of the President Ma on it, little trading cards and t-shirts reading “Tai-pei” in the shape of . . . what else but . . . the Superman logo.  We entered through the “Entrance” gateway looking much like the airport metal detectors, and exited through a similar “Departure” gateway.  The whole thing was very entertaining, and politically charged, but Chih Wei and I didn’t discuss the details of how this fabricated republic’s comical immigration experience was viewed in that respect.  We were having a good time, and a conversation about politics through translation in the middle of a crowded exhibition hall seemed like it would put a damper on things.  There was plenty to be inferred here.  Since we both decided to indulge in this designer’s world, I figured nothing too horrible would come of giving out my e-mail address, signing my name and having my picture taken . . . uh . . . well, I guess I can’t take it back now.  

A couple of neatly conceptual objects, a “stiletto” chair and a “corset” mirror, both by the same designer, really struck my fancy intellectually.  This sleek, plastic chair was made at angles matching that of a stiletto pump with only a tiny flat place for resting your rear.  The illustration next to the chair shows the proper way to sit: your bum on the little flat space with knees together and back strait as a board seeming to ask great effort on the sitter’s part.  The illustration also showed other, non-acceptable ways to sit in the chair each depicting drooping limbs or a hunched back.  I think I’ll leave you to contemplate the metaphor on your own.  The “corset” mirror, whose casing was also a simple white plastic, was not like a “fun-house” mirror.  It was just a plane old mirror that had plastic covers in the shape of a corset so that the only part of your torso left to view in the mirror was a small strip in the center, curving slightly out at the shoulder and hip heights.  The mirror only makes you look thinner by denying your view of the rest—ha ha. 

Ok, so, design catering to a unique cultural heritage, and political art sometimes need translation, but touring this exhibition was the opposite of wandering aimlessly in a foreign country.  That’s the great thing about art and design, they are their own language, and its one I understand.  You do or will too, because good design speaks to elements such as humor, beauty, food and metaphor, of our contemporary lives that are simply human.   

Look for the “Good Morning Cactus” and “Dressing Fruit” protectors at stores near you soon.

You can view more pictures of our tour of YODEX on my Flickr page.  

MoCA Taiwan: The LaChapelle Show

Surreal is when, as an American on your third day in Asia, you find yourself at a fine art museum watching a Brittany Spears music video, and consequently, the only other blond in the room.  

I'm in Taipei, Taiwan awaiting the commencement of my residency at the Yingge Ceramics Museum.  I'm here about a week before my first meeting with the residency coordinator and I'm doing the art-tourist thing.  First stop:  Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei.  The Museum's featured exhibition is a massive display of photographer and filmmaker David LaChapelle's work from 1985 to the present.  His first professional gig was for Andy Warhol.  The eccentric nature of his work follows suit.   The exhibition was sectioned thematically with groupings such as Deluge and Awakened, Holy War, Art in Heaven, and Michael Jackson, the most pointedly descriptive being Excessive Consumption, Celebrity Worship, and 15 Years of American Obsessions.  I'm pretty sure Miss Spears fits in that category on all accounts.

LaChapelle directed Spears' 2004 video for "Everytime".  According to my boyfriend, the video has an altered ending from the original ending of the pop queen's suicidal drowning in her luxury whirlpool.  The added ending is Miss Spears waking up from a dream of the suicide, which just ruins the whole thing. And, runs absolutely counter to LaChapelle's tragically glamorous aesthetic.  LaChapelle has been the director for a surprising number of pop music videos including Moby, Avril Lavigne, No Doubt, Blink 182, Elton John, Christina Agulera and Mariah Cary, to name a few.  Blink 182's "Feeling This" video was popular among the school groups attending the exhibition that day. As the video played on the wall of the stairwell where steps provided stadium seating, the youthful Asian audience giggled at the video's rebelling teens tearing off their school uniforms and busting out of prison-like boarding school joining the band in a punk, mosh-ing, riotous party scene.  How cool would that be to go on a school field trip to a museum as a teen and watch music videos?  Awesome.  However, the rest of the exhibition was an unapologetic display of adult content, and I'm not sure how it works in Taiwan, but if it were the States, every one of those kid's parents would have HAD to sign a consent form. 

Each of LaChapelle's works is a vat of religious, art-historical, and pop-culture references. The museum is so packed with this imagery, I'm surprised the windows and doors weren't starting to leek with some kind of chartreuse, syrup-y excrement of all the undigested cultural decadence. A documentary of the staging of the photography showed the workforce, organization and staging involved in The Deluge, a modern re-dux of Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel fresco in c-print.  I'm willing to bet that the production of this one print was probably more labor intensive than Miss Spears' faux suicide. 

LaChapelle's Rape of Africa, quotes another Renaissance masterpiece, Venus and Mars by Botticelli.  This was not my favorite work of the exhibition, but the environment created for its display was the most intriguing.  In its own room, the c-print occupied the length of the back wall of the room, but each of the sidewalls to the left and right were floor-to-ceiling mirrors along the entire length of each wall.  The imagery of the work is potent enough, but its infinite repetition is absolutely nauseating.  Interestingly, the device of the mirror has been appearing in my own art-viewing excursions for the past few years.  At the Whitney a few years ago, Rudolf Stingel installed a gold-toned floor for visitors to walk on in one room of his exhibition .... bad day to wear a skirt.  The roof of the Metropolitan featured Jeff Koons' mirror-polished stainless steel balloon doggie, reflecting us all as clowns.  In Millenium Park, Chicago, Anish Kapoor's "bean" looses its formless form in not only the viewer's reflection, but in reflecting the entire cityscape.  I think I'll start some research on the chronology and meaning (maybe . . . do i want to go there?) of what exactly Van Eyck started with The Arnolfini Wedding.

Back to LaChapelle in Taiwan, humor is also a major component of his work.  Dark, tragic, morbid, and apocalyptic are all forms of humor that resonate in most of the exhibition, except for a small section of photographs entitled, Recollections in America, where LaChapelle seems to take on a slapstick, political satire role. He has altered vintage photos of America's middle class by adding is own photographic components to create an absurd situation.  See if you can tell, left, what is what.  After being saturated with images of pop-porno-Hollywood-glamor-glossyness, this was a refreshing end to the LaChapelle Show. 

Thank you Mr. LaChapelle, for the visual ephedrine. Unfortunately, now I'm totally crashing, exhausted from jet lag, language barrier, night-market food, three flights of stairs to my miniature studio apartment, and the after-effect of your retrospective.  After some much needed sleep, I'm sure I'll be energetic about finally getting to start on my own work.  Clay seems so mundane after LaChapelle.  I'll take that as a challenge, thank you. 

 Above:  Taipei 101, me and boyfriend, and another surreal moment.