Taiwanese Perspective on Asian Culture-- The Side of Everyday Life

As the father of critique of everyday life, Henri Lefebvre, mentioned in his book《Critique of Everyday Life》published in 1960s, the production of space is not only under the authoritative control but exists as a practical, trivial and objectized everyday life experience which externalizes the participation of social members. Lefebvre considers city a space for production and reproduction in the capitalist society, concretizing the dominator’s arrangements in urban space. However, little light was shed on the social base of urbanism-- the everyday life, which was rationally and naturally ignored. In this sense, Galerie Grand Siècle selects four artists, CHANG Teng-Yuan, CHIU Kuo-Chun, CHANG Yung-Ta and Tseng Shu-Fen, seeing art as agent of life critique, to present visions of ordinariness and repetitiveness of everyday life. This project intends to apply the four Taiwanese artists’ active creativity and meticulous expression in a constructive sense to transform the mundane, pettifogging life and to uncover the tiny senses veiled under the Taiwanese ordinary culture. The project is developed through the links among rooted local culture, body senses and cultural imagination of future.

Taiwanese Local Culture and Rooted Phenomenon

To point out the connection between Taiwanese traditional culture and contemporary consumption society, CHIU Kuo-Chun incorporates cultural symbols and cultural idioms into images or actions giving prominence to Taiwanese cultural contexts. His photography works raised a rooted phenomenon of Taiwanese that the spiritual dependence on god abides by a trading relationship in the idol filled society where the primary meanings of symbols in folk deity belief have been associated to the context of carnival-like occasions that can take people away from the reality.

The Corporality in Taiwanese Everyday Life

“How do we get in touch with the world by ears?”is the question raised by CHANG Yung-Ta in his work Relative Perception. This work can, metaphorically, palpate the space by performing the sounds during the process of thermal expansion and contraction in the metal.The other artist, Tseng Shu-Fen, graduated from formal art education in Taiwan, tackled the visual illusion by setting up the referential installation of pseudo-three-dimensionality to propose the possible development of painting in contemporary art that challenges the status quo. The works of CHANG Yung-Ta and Tseng Shu-Fen signify body perception including the ways of viewing and ways senses dominate humans. Body perception is instinctive, intuitive response system by which humans can review and respond to the current situation.

Looking at the Contemporary from Future

Rather than interpreting the micro perspectives on ordinary contemporary life, artist CHANG Teng-Yuan uses the clues gained from the imagination of future scenarios to reflect on contemporary issues. Moreover, his works provide a fresh idea that maybe those instant incidents we consider to have immense meaning are regarded slow and ordinary by lives from different planets. Such characterized idioms and features can refresh what we have felt emotionally numb, signify the profound ambiguity in contemporary life, and throw a question worthy of thinking.

Their works are both resulted from special insights grown from Taiwanese geographical-historical environment with an eye to guiding the global audience to reconsider the validity of body perception in every life. They seek to introduce the universally short and weak connection between man and ordinary objects regardless of cultural, historical, and language barriers via diverse media of art.