Taishin Bank Foundation for Arts and Culture

Comments on the Finalist

By means of signs, the works successfully explored the structure of power and disassembled the memory of history and symbols of power in a wise and sharp way. The exhibition completely expressed the courses of creation and made an outstanding example of art’s participation in politics.

Jury’s Comments for the Visual Arts Award

The exhibition well revealed the consistency of an artist’s thinking system, and successfully displayed the artist’s idea of art as witness and discourse on political and social phenomena along with contemporary culture.

The artworks in the exhibition clearly showed an artist’s talent in applying visual language of humor, tact and irony to deal with serious or sensitive issues, with an intention to fuse popular culture, ideology, and social context into a sort of “revised found-objects”, and demonstrated the possibility of making Conceptual Art with sound domestic color and self-affirmation.

Artwork Introduction

Mei Dean-E marks the historical development of Taiwanese culture. His work is the reflection of the second-generation immigrants in Taiwan from the Mainland China.

Mei also marks the development of Taiwanese arts. Mei’s invasion of arts into politics offers the opportunity to reflect and judge politics on the basis of art.

Mei has absorbed the western artistic concepts since Marcel Duchamp. Those concepts evolve around the dialectic of symbols. Mei uses various media, such as painting, sculpture, photography, recording, animated images etc., to explore his reflection and inquiry on Taiwan.

For the past 30 years, as an artist who realizes western artistic concepts, his persistency has resulted in plentiful of quality works. His invasion of arts into politics also demonstrates the active involvement of an artist in the society. During the contemporary development of Taiwan, Mei’s work definitely is an important landmark. （by Jiunhsien Lee）

About the Artist

So glad to receive the Taishin Arts Award. I feel so blessed. It has been a long time since last time my dwelling upon the meaning of an art award. In this deconstructive and post-modern society, an award seems to be the enemy of art. That is to say, art cannot be ranked. What I want to?express is that every one is worth winning the first prize.

Production Team

Artist / Curator： Dean-E Mei