Field day: Sculpture from Britain, the current show at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, brings together a panoramic range of works made between 1960 and 2001 by 24 British artists. The works that include documentary film, video, wall drawing and photographs raise the question: "What is sculpture?"
Installed in a chronological fashion, we first encounter sculptures by artists of the 1960s. These artists transformed dense, earth-colored metals into breezy chromatic objects. Anthony Caro's brightly-hued welded steel Month of May is airy and light, creating vibrant magenta, orange and green lines drawn in space, while Phillip King produced cheery confections.
Besides colorful pieces, much of the early sculptures make self-conscious references to the support or to the frame. This is most clearly seen in Barry Flanagan's June (2) '69 which is a 2m by 5m piece of linen canvas held against the wall by three long willow sticks. Almost like an artist's inside joke, this piece wryly comments on painting by referring to the surface of the canvas, and on sculpture by obviously showing the supporting sticks that hold up the canvas.
PHOTO: MANRAY HSU
If you think sculpture is an object that has three dimensions: height, width and depth, then you may be surprised by the inclusion of Michael Craig-Martin's Reading (With Globe) (1980). Craig-Martin's work is an outline drawing made with black tape adhered to the wall creating an image similar to a child's coloring book.
Could Douglas Gordon's room-sized video projection of a found movie clip also constitute as sculpture? In 10 ms-1, an old hospital film shows a crippled man striving to walk from one bed to the next. However, he falls down and struggles to get up. Gordon puts the film in a loop, so the man is really straining to lift himself from the floor; the feeble man's attempts can also be seen as a metaphor for the trials of life.
The unique duo Gilbert & George have been around for years and really belong in their own category. In their hilarious video Gordon's Makes Us Drunk (1972), the two sit as still as mannequins in their best dignified English gentlemen style and slowly sip their gin cocktails. While the hit song of graduation ceremonies Pomp and Circumstance serenades us, a calm voice intermittently repeats "Gordon's Makes Us Drunk."
PHOTO: MANRAY HSU
Known for his earth work, which is art set in natural settings, and for his nature walks, Richard Long is represented with Spring Circle (1992), a perfectly arranged circle of slate stones.
Much of the work from the early 1980s are compilations of found objects and best exemplified by Bill Woodrow's Car Door, Armchair and Incident (1981), in what apparently looks like an armchair that just blew its batting out all over the wall.
Richard Wentworth's Cumulus whimsically pokes fun at one of the dictums from art school -- that sculpture has to 'stand' up by itself. An inverted ladder supports a fragile glass shelf that contains white ceramic dishes and looks ready to topple over any second.
PHOTO: MANRAY HSU
Step into Mona Hatoum's small wooden cylindrical structure, gaze into the video and follow the journey a small camera made through the interior of the artist's body.
Another unique way to look at our world is provided by Anya Gallacio's Chasing Rainbows (1998). Her floor installation of glass reflects the overhead light, thus creating a magnificent, yet hard to catch, spectrum of color.
Of course, what show about recent British art would be complete without the work of the "yBas," young British artists, who were also the bane of New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani a year and a half ago?
PHOTO COURTESY OF THE BRITISH COUNCIL COLLECTION
Sarah Lucas exploits the stereotype of a bad girl in her photographic series of self-portraits. But just as the virgin and the mother are icons of fine art, so have "loose" women been canonized as fine art, too. In her installation Fuck Destiny, the act of coupling is figuratively portrayed with a seedy couch and some bare lightbulbs.
Damien Hirst's double entendres are great starting points or clues to his work. I'll love you forever is a blue padlocked cage containing yellow and red containers of medical waste and used syringes. To whom do the pronouns of the title refer?
Can this be seen as a poignant piece to a dying lover, or to someone who is addicted to drugs or to the medical system? Another conflict exists between the innocent, gaily-colored containers and their sinister contents. But just when you think you can get a grasp on the questions that his work raises, the elusive answer flies away, leaving more confounding questions in its wake. However, this is really the secret to great conceptual art.
PHOTO COURTESY OF THE BRITISH COUNCIL COLLECTION
So, can sculpture be flat images taped to a wall, a video of the inside of someone's visceral body cavities or a shy and fleeting rainbow? Perhaps. Our brains can quickly translate three-dimensional images into two-dimensional ones, and vice versa, and our brains are also quite adept at interpreting objects as images and ideas. But perhaps, sculpture does not even have to be an object after all.
Art Notes:
What: Field Day: Sculpture From Britain
PHOTO COURTESY OF THE BRITISH COUNCIL COLLECTION
Where: Taipei Fine Arts Museum 181 Chungshan N. Rd., Sec. 3, Taipe (台北市中山北路三段181號), 2595-7656
When: Until June 24
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