Preface
Ping Lin Director of the Taipei Fine Arts Museum
The Taipei Fine Arts Museum was closed for a nine-month renovation project since 2017 that included replacing its air-conditioning system, refreshing venues, and expanding the collection department facilities. During this period, the Museum continued to purchase works and even received groundbreaking donations, bringing the collection to a total of 4,997 works as of December 2017. The 2017 collection catalog reflects both new purchases and donations, including thirty-nine photography-based works, two ink paintings, eighteen mixed-media works, seven oil paintings, seven sculptures, and one drawing, for a total of seventy-four new pieces.
For 2017, the Museum has revisited its collection policy, creating guidelines for the categories of modern and contemporary Taiwanese art history, the chronological development of artists' careers, and also for certain contemporary issues found in the curatorial focuses of topical exhibitions.
Most of the works acquired in 2017 were purchased after being exhibited at the Museum. Included in this category is Yu Cheng-Ta's Ode to the Taipei Biennial, which was exhibited at Declaration / Documentation: Taipei Biennial, 1996-2014 and responded to the biennial with both sound and text. Yeh Shih-Chiang's Morning Prayers and Yeh Wei-Li's YSC Shuinandong Residence Series I, both exhibited at the 2016 Taipei Biennial, were also purchased. Morning Prayers features the artist's style of oil painting influenced by his quiet and meaningful life of seclusion, whereas YSC Shuinandong Residence Series I is a series of five photographs documenting Yeh Shih-Chiang's lifestyle at his former residence. Seventeen masterpieces from photojournalist Wang Hsin's retrospective exhibition Line of Vision－The Photography of Wang Hsin, including Self-Lamentation and Fugitive Eyes, as well as works from the series titled On Portraits, were carefully selected to complement works already in the collection. Lin Bo-Liang's Waiting: Shiy De-jinn, Hung Cheng-Ren's Melancholy Field, Hou I-Ting's Lı̍k-sú Tsiam-tsílâng were all collected from the exhibition Faint Light, Dark Shadows and are based in photography while integrating other elements, such as video, collage, or embroidery, to realize each artist's exploration of crossmedia. From the German artist Nils Völker, the Museum purchased the kinetic installation Twelve, which was created onsite in 2016 for the exhibition The Way Things Go and includes the blue and white tarpaulin commonly seen in Taiwan to give physical expression to air currents. Yuan Goang-Ming's video Storage of Tranquility, which was filmed in the collection storage room thus laying bare its mystique, was also acquired after being made specifically for the experimental exhibition Dance with the Museum Collection – Retrieved, Reimagined, Restated. Untitled, a sculpture by the Hong Kong artist Antonio Mak Hin-yeung, which has been displayed in the Museum Court Garden since it opened to become an integral part of the Museum scenery as well as visitor's memories, was purchased in 2017 two decades after the artist's death. The Museum was unable to contact the artist's widow until this year to purchase the work, which is a significant addition to the collection.
Works are acquired owing to their links to the Museum, yet potential acquisitions must also conform to the Museum collection policy or fill a gap in the collection. Works in this category include the Fifth Moon Group painter Fong Chung-Ray's abstract composition 2012-08, which includes Chinese characters and conveys intense emotion; Su Hsin-Yi's The Youth Trilogy, which is different from his usual theme—Southern Taiwan industrial epic and presents the artist's colorful and youthful style; and Lee Jiun-Shyan's Sea God-Female Knight, which is a large composition amassing numerous Taiwanese elements. Each of these paintings responds to the history of the Taiwan region in a unique way, and each response is key to developing its painting's style.
The 2017 donation program yielded many breakthroughs in the context of the Taipei Biennial, and the scope and richness of these works are evident. The donated works include Wu Tien-Chang's figurative photograph Blind Men Groping Down the Lane, which was presented in the Taiwan Pavilion of the 56th Venice Biennale and gifted to the Museum by the artist; and Tehching Hsieh's One Year Performance 1978-1979 along with three other pieces, which were presented in the 57th Biennale Pavilion and now constitute an important part of the Museum's performance art collection. The collector Peng Pei-Chen donated Lee Tzu-Hsun's Maze Theater, which was exhibited at the 2002 Taipei Biennial and is a rarely seen, large-scale installation. Besides these epoch-making donations related to the promotion of contemporary art at biennials, The Bird, The Man with a Whip, Kneeling Man, and Wrestling by one of the Ton-Fan Art Group's Eight Great Outlaws Hsia Yan were also donated. These sculptures were presented in the exhibition Hsia Yan: Journey to Art, where their relationship to the artist's paintings was highlighted. The three small oil paintings Self Portrait, Entertaining Guests and Bridge Crossing Mountain Stream by Wang Kun-Nan were donated by his family member Chen Mu-Tsai. Through his son, Huang Kuang-Nan, who had once served as the Museum's director, donated the minimalist sculpture Taking Flight by Kao Tsan-Hsing. Also the artists Su Hsin-Yi and Daniel Lee donated their own works, and Liu Li donated a drawing by Chu Yun-Gee, which lends great historical significance to the Museum collection.
Recently, the Museum has faced the extreme challenges of renovating its collection facilities and transforming its collection policy. The Museum strives to keep pace with the emergence of new art forms, such as project-based art, performance art, and new-media art, and this year, collection guidelines were expanded to accommodate time-based art. Works collected over the years are the Museum's treasures as well as important historical assets. In addition to preservation and maintenance, the Museum continually strives to make the meaning of the collection broader and deeper.
Contents
012 - WANG Kun-Nan (pdf)
016 - WANG Hsin (pdf)
034 - Chu Yun-Gee (pdf)
036 - YU Cheng-Ta (pdf)
038 - WU Tien-Chang (pdf)
040 - WU Cheng-Chang (pdf)
044 - LEE Tzu-Hsun (pdf)
048 - Daniel LEE (pdf)
050 - LEE Jiun-Shyan
054 - LEE Kuo-Min (pdf)
058 - Chou Tai-Chun (pdf)
060 - LIN Bo-Liang (pdf)
066 - LIN Chuan-Chu (pdf)
072 - CHIU Kuo-Chun (pdf)
074 - HOU I-Ting (pdf)
078 - HUNG Cheng-Ren (pdf)
082 - HSIA Yan (pdf)
086 - Nils Völker (pdf)
090 - YUAN Goang-Ming (pdf)
094 - KAO Tsan-Hsing (pdf)
096 - CHANG Chien-Chi (pdf)
100 - HSU Che-Yu (pdf)
104 - Antonio Mak Hin-yeung (pdf)
106 - FONG Chung-Ray (pdf)
108 - YEH Shih-Chiang (pdf)
110 - YEH Wei-Li (pdf)
114 - PU Hao-Ming (pdf)
116 - Tehching HSIEH (pdf)
122 - SU Hsin-Yi (pdf)
126 - SU Hui-Yu (pdf)
130 - TANG Jo-Hung (pdf)