Director's Foreword
The Taipei Fine Arts Museums (TFAM) has been implementing a system for calls for exhibition proposals for over three decades, and the objective is to organize different solo exhibitions in order to present the diverse range of creativities and transdisciplinary ways of thinking demonstrated by Taiwanese artists. These exhibitions are all-encompassing, including small-scale retrospectives, interim reviews and categorizations, or experimental endeavors, which are all presented with opportunities to organically manifest inside the museum's exhibition space. The museum launched the "Solo Exhibition Series" in 2017, which is a call for exhibition proposal program. Four exceptional exhibitions are selected each time from the submissions, with f ocus placed on various diverse creative endeavors by artists in their middle stage of their adult hood and also new emerging artists.
Included in the "2019 Solo Exhibition Series II" is the immersive video installation, "Everyday Fictionality: Beholding Shadows of Illusion" by Sera Chen. Through studies on art, the artist seeks to deconstruct then reconstruct certain social issues, the environment, and existing "natureness", with new ways of seeing specific subject matters and ideologies proposed. Viewers are invited to examine ordinary everyday occurrences and things through the use of their own physical perceptions and to explore any meaning and implications that have been purposely constructed. Chen's artwork, The Habitat on The Skyline, is a video installation that shows the ubiquitous but unique residential view found in Taipei with rooftop addon units, which are dwellings that have emerged out of people’s basic needs and are structures that have not been constructed based on precise architectural measurements and calculations. Chen sees this kind of structures as sculptures floating in mid-air in Taipei, and they represent a form of everyday aesthetic. Slowly playing on the duo-channel video installation are images of roof-top units shot at different locations, and the objective of the artwork is to encourage the audience to think about the connection between the organic emergence of these structures and Taiwan's socioeconomic and geographical conditions.
Another artwork, Natureness I, is composed with video projection, potted plants, and artificial plants (non-indigenous types). The artwork blurs the boundaries between reality and fiction through a perceptual and cognitive approach and further explores the relationship between natural and artificial. Natureness II is a multi-channel video and projection piece that produces an external montage that brings augmented possibilities for the audience to see the artwork. It examines the in-between narratives found in the narrative world and reality. Wearing Red is a fictional experimental documentary that looks into the fictitiousness with memory and cross-cultural representation, which further leads to reflections on the nomadic qualities with identity issues in the context of cultural subjectivity.
The successfully realization of the exhibition, "Everyday Fictionality: Beholding Shadows of Illusion", is due to the wisdom and dedication demonstrated by the 2018 exhibition proposal jury committee. Because of the guidance of these jurors, TFAM is able to continue with organizing this platform for call for exhibition proposals. Also, special thanks go to everyone that devoted their enthusiasm and professionalism for the production of the exhibition.
Director of Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Ping Lin
Contents
Director's Foreword
Preface
Acknowledgement
Simulating Landscape
Simulating Nature
Simulating Everyday