03.18 - 04.18
台南新藝獎
NEXT TAINAN 2021
LIANG Ting-Yu, Andreas WATHER
Group Exhibition
A Double of Nature Curator: WU Chieh-Hsiang
The “2021 Next Art Tainan” exhibit “A Double of Nature” indicated an encounter of an imagined and invisible nature. As mentioned in the Śūraṅgama Sūtra, “nature appears to be incomprehensible,” thus, people need to scrutinize its order through the creation of shapes (characters), the creation of forms (images), the creation of objects (vessels), and the creation of sounds (music). The Tao-Te-Ching shares the concept by mentioning that “the largest space has no corners, the greatest vessel takes the longest time to create, great music has rare notes, and the great form is without shape” implying that there is a limitation for humans to gather ideas from nature, yet no limit for discovery. Artists collect ideas from nature, exhausting nature as well as taking resources from it.
Xu Shen mentioned in the preface of Shuowen Jiezi that “the pictogram is derived from the shape of the object, the meaning could be seen from it… the compound ideogram is to combine two words together to form a new word and a new meaning.” It is rare that people understand the concept of nature, or how it is formed. Therefore, they often rely on the mimicry of artists to get a picture of it, an art technique we call “pictograms” when characters were first created.
The 2021 Next Art Tainan exhibition was designed by arranging ten pairs of artists of different media and different generations to exhibit in ten galleries. They were inspired by each other’s understanding of nature as well as the interpretation of the surrounding artificial environment. The artworks were gathered together seemingly by chance, yet their contrast is found within the harmony and their concordance is found within their distinctions. The concept presents the dialectic of the “Double Nature,” and was therefore chosen as the theme of the exhibition.
梁廷毓 LIANG Ting-Yu (b.1994, TW)
LIANG Ting-Yu received his master’s degree in trans-disciplinary arts from Taipei National University of Arts. LIANG’s practice focuses on integrating regional investigations and studies with project-based art actions and mixed media art. He examines issues related to historical archives and ethnic relations, and he has recently expanded into exploring archives and local myths and legends.
By using motion images, local ghost stories, image production, and writing, he creates artworks that look into relationships between cross-regional fields and arts.
華安瑞 Andreas WALTHER (b.1971, GR)
Andreas WALTHER lives and works in Germany and Taiwan since 1998. Originally starting off from New Media Art (Academy of Media Arts Cologne) and doing video work that reflects on temporal and spatial qualities.
Andreas got in contact with Daoist thought (Laozi, Zhuangzi) and traditional Chinese practise (Shanshui, Shufa, Guqin, Taichi) in Taiwan from 2006 on, passionately getting familiar with the idea of a dynamic and open quality of nature as a process that human can be a part of.
While visiting Scotland and the Highlands in 2009, Andreas began to engage in photography, seeking to apply Daoist practise – e.g. Qiyun (氣韻) – for his photographic work in order to find a way not to reflect on experience and end up in ‚“landscape”, but to keep a certain immediacy of experience and so remain within the‚ “process of nature. ” This was not an easy task as photography is a medium that is technically designed and per se runs its program and creates images at the push of a button.
