Taipei City Government

Since March the Taipei Fine Arts Museum has been running a new, top-flight show. It has chosen works from four selected artists to be its permanent collection, around the theme“Memory of a Journey”. In all works the artists approach scenes from the perspective of a traveler on a trip; the trips are trips down memory lane, of the life journeys and creative output of each. In looking at the works visitors can gaze deeply into the life, the soul, the creative process, and the travel experiences of each artist.

The Taiwan artists featured in the show are oil painters Huang Ming-chang and Qiu Jian-ren, video installation artist Wang Ya-hui, and renowned film director Tsai Ming-liang. The show is scheduled to run a full six months, until August 15th, giving the artists and their oeuvres plenty of exposure to the public.

The respective birthdates of these four artists spread from the 1950s through the 1980s, meaning markedly different backgrounds and life experience. Selected memories of their life journeys have been filtered through their familiar individual styles of artistic expression in ways that ensure the works resonate profoundly with the modern visitor, so passionate for the travel experience themselves.

The 12 oil paintings of Huang Ming-chang are arranged under the theme“Paris Attic—Illumination and Seeing Series”. These capture his memories from his early years as a student in Paris. Huang is a realist painter, his style clear, crisp, precise, and in these works the doubts and uncertainties of a wanderer in a faraway land are vibrantly expressed. Painter Qiu Jian-ren, born in the 1980s, carries a digital camera around to capture those telling little vignettes from modern everyday life, transferring them to the world of paint with a heavy concentration of whites, blues, and shades of grey-black to deftly capture the feel of the aimless wanderer in the city and life tableaux we all find ourselves in. Wang Ya-hui's video-installation masterpieces create the experience of going on a guided tour of her childhood years and the places she lived in; visitors follow her steps as they travel through the time, space, and memory of another.

The special draw of the“Memory of a Journey” attraction is the name Tsai Ming-liang, a film director acclaimed on the international scene. His film It's a Dream and an imaginative work of installation art are combined to evoke the artist's memories of his childhood in Malaysia. His 23-minute film is the first cinematic work added to the museum's permanent collection. The work of installation art replicates an old cinema, with old red chairs and old songs by Rebecca Pan. Screenings of the film are given inside.You'll indeed feel that It's a Dream while re-experiencing Tsai's childhood through his nostalgic artwork.

Traveling through the worlds of the four“Memory of a Journey”artists featured is a trip through four distinctly different time periods. The transformations seen in the artworks capture the transformations experienced in four lives. The juxtaposition of the modern and the nostalgic will reverberate within the psyche of the viewer—you— stimulating a meditation on the space and time you now inhabit and the transformations running through your own existence.