Taishin Bank Foundation for Arts and Culture

Comments on the Finalist

The televised series of Avant-garde Liberation display an in-depth introduction of contemporary Taiwan art to our fellowmen.

As both an objective witness and a subjective re-creation, it takes Huang a decade to record the development of contemporary Taiwan art and fulfills a conventional but urgent need for biographical records of artists. We are obliged to appreciate Huang’s laborious efforts as well as his excellent production shared nationwide.

We select the TV series of this work, instead of its museum exhibition, to inspire an alternative reconsideration of the exhibition. Since an exhibition serves primarily to make the most of its accessibility to audience, the depth and width, rather than immediacy, of such accessibility should be emphasized.

Artwork Introduction

Avant Garde Liberation, a documentary series on 14 contemporary Taiwanese artists by director Huang Mingchuan, was presented at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum via big screenings and 14 television sets. At the same time, Taiwan Public Television broadcasts the entire series in 14 individual episodes on consecutive Friday evenings from 11:30 p.m. to 12:00 a.m. beginning on March 8.

The first formal documentary series on contemporary Taiwanese artists, Avant Garde Liberation features the 14 most representative creative Taiwanese artists of the 1990s systematically selected by Huang from his extensive documentary footage on more than 50 contemporary visual artists collected over a decade from as early as 1984. The public presentation of the series on Public Television under the title Avant Garde Liberation represents due recognition for this group of highly inventive artists, while also presenting a portrait of the development and progression of contemporary Taiwanese art as well as precious records of individual oral history. Most of the artists included in the series have been presented at the TFAM in solo or joint exhibitions, or by invitation to the Taipei Biennial.

About the Artist

Graduated in Law at the National Taiwan University, but chose to drop a career in law to go to the US to study lithogfaphy and fine-art painting. In New York, his interests expanded to take in cinema and photography. He worked for many well-known advertising agencies on print ads and TV commercials and finally opened his own studio in the city, running it for three years.

After more than a decade in the US, Huang returned to Taiwan in 1988 and teamed up with a group of young film enthusiasts to explore the possibility of making independent films, included The Man From Island West, Bodo, and Flat Tyre.

cinematography himself.

In addition to his intermitted independent feature projects, Huang has made numerous documentaries on arts subjects, including biographical portraits of veteran novelists, one hundred poets oral history video project, and most important of all:Avant Garde Liberation:The Huang Mingchuan Image collection of the l990s, The series took Huang 9 years to finish.

Production Team

Producer / Director： Huang Mingchuan

Co-producer： Shell Wang

Camera： Bodo Zeng, Chiang Guoliang, Yang Nengje, Huang Mingchuan

Editor： Huang Mingchuan, Xu Chunxi, Singing Chen, Awei Liu

Exhibition design： TFAM & Huang Mingchuan

Name of Nominee： Ming –Chuan Huang

Music： Tania Wang, Lee Yichang, Wang Furay