Taishin Bank Foundation for Arts and Culture

Comments on the Finalist

This was an insistent experiment and thorough exploration of the forms of abstract minimalism, stripping off the materiality to expose the spatial nature of metaphysical dynamics while preserving the position of man. The consideration behind the abstraction was the formal aesthetics of refined modernism searching for the possible exit of contemporary painting.

Jury’s Comments for the Jury's Special Awards

AThe artist’s entrepreneurial spirit makes the artwork continue to develop after its comple-tion, demonstrating rich creativity and vitality.

The artwork combines the cultures of different human roots, exhibits an intent to break the limits of space and time, and further poses a doubt to the ridicule of “civilization”.

The exhibition not only displays aesthetic beauty but also incorporates elements of perfor-ming arts. It has been successfully expanded into a culture play of full scope.

Artwork Introduction

"The Beauty and Mystery of Bu Num Civilization Revealed" and Jean Baudrillard's (1929-) "simulacre" have the similar appeals. The latter aims to reveal the mystic operating logic or structure underlying the consumer society. This kind of art type does not reach its maturity until the 90's. Recently, many examples of this art type can be found in Taiwan, including Junjieh Wang's "Little Mutton Dumplings for the 13th day"（1994）and "Microbiology Association" （2000）and Shulea Cheng's "Garlic Era" （2002-3）. The common feature of this art type is as follows: first, symbols are created and disseminated through the mass media. After those symbols are received and understood, they are of authenticity and are truly believed. In this way, myth is created. Then, people accept the meaning of these symbols and shop accordingly.

What differentiates Tu Wei-cheng's "The Beauty and Mystery of Bu Num Civilization Revealed" from the abovementioned works is its focus on manual craftsmanship to create a pseudo-civilization, rather than the use of imaging technology to build a virtual future. Opposite to the technological-oriented contemporary art, the emphasis on manual craftsmanship in"The Beauty and Mystery of Bu Num Civilization Revealed" implicitly indicates the fact that the author adopts an eclectic viewpoint between the extremes of neo art and manual craftsmanship. The viewpoint is something not unusual among Taiwanese artists so that it deserves more in-depth discussion.

In other words, what makes" The Beauty and Mystery of Bu Num Civilization Revealed" stand out is the combination of imaging craftsmanship and manual craftsmanship so that it embodies rather than criticizes the structure of modern myth. That is it adopts the viewpoint of a viewer. In particular, its grand-scale and scrupulous creating process also attracts lots of attention.（By Chen Rui-Wen）

About the Artist

What I was intended to do is to create a doomed performance. That is to create certain kind of sophistication with history implanted inside, managing it the way we run an art museum, and then market it with my own bare hands.

"Bu Num" is a very humble piece of work, but it is fleshed by lots of passionate souls, so in the end, the collaborative efforts seem to make it a big big festival....

Production Team

Artist / Curator： National Theatre