Text and photos by Jewel Chuaunsu
Art Kaohsiung at the Pier-2 Art Center
Once the site of abandoned warehouses from the 1970s, the Pier-2 Art Center in Kaohsiung’s Yancheng District has become an art and lifestyle hub in recent years. Since 2013, the Pier-2 Art Center has been the main venue for Art Kaoh-siung. The location of the art fair aptly relates to Kaohsiung’s history and identity as Taiwan’s southern port city and illus- trates the role of art in urban renewal.
Jurga Martin's "Offrande" 2017, 55 x 25 x 16 cm bronze Art Kaohsiung 2017 was held last December 8-10 in the warehouses of the Pier-2 Art Center, as well as in City Suites, Kaohsiung Chennai. Now on its fifth edition, Art Kaohsiung has opened up a new sphere for Taiwan’s art market. Eighty top galleries from Taiwan, China, Japan, Korea, Singapore, Vietnam, Myanmar, and Russia showed outstand- ing works from more than 300 artists. In keeping with its initiative of providing a platform for Southeast and Northeast Asian art, the Fair invited Vietnam and China to have their own contemporary art platforms.
For the Vietnam Contemporary Art Platform, Vin Gallery organized Material Relations: Continuity and Innovation in Lacquer and Silk Painting from Vietnam.
Curated by Richard Streitmatter-Tran, the exhibition featured six contemporary art- ists based in Vietnam—Le Thuy, Nguyen Thi Chau Giang, Phi Phi Oanh, Richard Streitmatter-Tran, Saeko Ando and Tran Nguyen Trung Tin. While both lacquer and silk painting are considered traditional art forms in Vietnam, the participating artists developed their own approaches in order to push the limits of the two medi- ums materially and conceptually.
Vin Gallery also presented Rare Museum Pieces from the Vietnam War, 1956- 1978, with exceptionally rare works by North Vietnamese army artists. Outside Vietnam, these wartime works are in the permanent collections of the British Museum, National Gallery Singapore, and the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Korea.
For the Vietnam Contemporary Art Platform, Vin Gallery organized Material Relations: Continuity and Innovation in Lacquer and Silk Painting from Vietnam.
Curated by Richard Streitmatter-Tran, the exhibition featured six contemporary art- ists based in Vietnam—Le Thuy, Nguyen Thi Chau Giang, Phi Phi Oanh, Richard Streitmatter-Tran, Saeko Ando and Tran Nguyen Trung Tin. While both lacquer and silk painting are considered traditional art forms in Vietnam, the participating artists developed their own approaches in order to push the limits of the two medi- ums materially and conceptually.
Vin Gallery also presented Rare Museum Pieces from the Vietnam War, 1956- 1978, with exceptionally rare works by North Vietnamese army artists. Outside Vietnam, these wartime works are in the permanent collections of the British Museum, National Gallery Singapore, and the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Korea.
Kenichi Wani’s oil on canvas and resin and wooden blocks works The China Contemporary Art Plat- form, curated by Hu Yung Fen, looked at The Happening Art Scene of Wuhan. The Hubei Institute of Fine Arts in Wuhan City cultivated generations of emerg-
ing contemporary artists. A select eleven artists, including Li Yu + Liu Bo, Wang Ling, Du Chun Hui, Zhou Hong, Fan Chu Jing, Yuan Xiao Fang, Lang Xue Bo, Fu Zhing Wang, Ye Zhi Cong, and Wei
Guang Qing represented the forces of contemporary art in Wuhan today.
Consisting of 22 galleries, Art Kaoh- siung’s Contemporary Art Section was housed in the P2 and P3 warehouses. Some of the works that stood out were Jurga Martin’s pastel-colored bronze sculptures of daydreaming children (Gal- lery Bergamo); Cen Long’s highly evoca- tive paintings of ordinary people (Hann Art Agency); Makiko Yamauchi’s acrylic and transfer sheet works featuring koi, foliage and colored pencils, and Makoto Kumagai’s cast iron sculptures of personal objects that belonged to his father (Gallery Yamaguchi kunst-bau); Zi Peng’s subtle jade-hued Chinese landscape paintings (Y2ARTS Gallery); Shi Jin’s wall-bound sculptures teasing the outlines of zebra stripes and dragonfly wings (THZ Gallery); Sio Montera’s abstract expressionist works and Kenichi Wani’s paintings and resin figures featuring his cartoon-like character Odi (Qube Gallery).
Chun-Yi Chang’s “Fairy Lake Series”, 2014, HD video. Gaze in the iron box, curated by He- Ling Luo, was easily the highlight of the Fair. Set up outside the warehouse and right along the pier were nine container vans that were repurposed into rooms for screening video works. The clever use of container vans again referenced Kaohsiung’s history as a shipping port.
Participating artists in the video sec- tion included Yin-Ju Chen and James T. Hong, Chun-Yi Chang, Zhan Zhang Xu, Chi-Yu Wu, Pei-Shih Tu, Ze Wei, Yi-Chi
Lin, Ching-Chuan Hu, Karen Kramer, and Patrick Hough. In particular, Yin-Ju Chen and James T. Hong’s “End Transmission” is a hypnotic experimental film relaying an unsettling message from aliens, while Pei- Shih Tu’s animated video “Last Wills” real- izes the last wishes of famous people such as Franz Kafka, Beethoven, and Rodin.
Participating artists in the video sec- tion included Yin-Ju Chen and James T. Hong, Chun-Yi Chang, Zhan Zhang Xu, Chi-Yu Wu, Pei-Shih Tu, Ze Wei, Yi-Chi
Lin, Ching-Chuan Hu, Karen Kramer, and Patrick Hough. In particular, Yin-Ju Chen and James T. Hong’s “End Transmission” is a hypnotic experimental film relaying an unsettling message from aliens, while Pei- Shih Tu’s animated video “Last Wills” real- izes the last wishes of famous people such as Franz Kafka, Beethoven, and Rodin.
