A vista of rolling hills rise gently to form a range of snow-capped mountains; every ridge, cliff and rock face contoured by stark light and deep shadows. This scenery is not from Taiwan’s Central Mountain range: It is the work of Japanese artist Atsushi Mizutani, part of the “Glory of Mighty Mountains: Ridges Between Awe and Respect” (嶾嶙的岳光：在敬與畏的稜線間) exhibition at the Tainan Art Museum.
The exhibition spanning four galleries features several artists exploring three subthemes: “The Realm of Spiritual Motions between Brightness and Darkness,” “Following the Clear and Bright Light,” and “Co-Creation With Mountains.”
Mizutani’s intricately carved and painted wooden blocks, titled Phantom Landscape, dominate the first gallery, which is fittingly darkened in line with the first subtheme, with gentle spotlights causing visitors to gravitate to the pieces exploring the spiritual dimension of mountains.
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Photo: Doruk Sargin
Wu Chi-cheng’s (吳其錚) Mountains provides a counterpoint to Mizutani’s clean, sterile lines, with two large clay pieces offering a messier, more abstract look into the spirituality of the majestic formations. It is also no coincidence that Wu’s earthen, almost moving pieces are bound tight with metal wires, hinting at a theme that is openly explored in the next gallery.
In Tsai Pou-ching’s (蔡咅璟) Song of the Russet Sparrow, which anchors Gallery B, birdsong emanates from numerous clay pots hanging from two large wooden scaffolds. An audiovisual display shows humans engaged in their noisy endeavors — machinery working at a road construction site and a factory production line spitting out blocks of cement — which at times drown out the “birds.” The piece helps drive home the message signaled in Wu’s Mountains: Despite their might and majesty, mountains — and their ecosystems — are under siege. Tsai’s message becomes more jarring as the display shows a group of children running and shouting at a school in a mountain area: that human activity does not need to be destructive in order to be disruptive to the natural order of things.
The next subtheme, “Following the Clear and Bright Light,” looks into mountain forests, which form a boundary between civilization and wilderness, and which humans have tried to tame by building trails. Kao Jun-honn’s (高俊宏) Turtle-Leopard Trail, an ambitious project that involves hiking along trails that pass through historic sites, brings together observation, reading and filmmaking.
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Photo: Doruk Sargin
As the exhibition moves on to its last subtheme, its focus also shifts from the spiritual dimension of mountains to humans’ awe and respect for the formations. “Symbiosis - Resonance,” an installation by Corelia Tam (譚若蘭) and Matthew Tsang Man Fu (曾敏富), attempts to capture the majesty of mountains in a more literal way than Mizutani’s Phantom Landscape, as it creates small-scale vistas that greet visitors with rock faces and snow-capped peaks.
The tone of the exhibition moves further from the abstract to the concrete with a traditional Chinese painting of mountainscape by Wang Sing-dao (王興道), a collection of sketches by Yuyu Yang (楊英風) and a colorful painting of Yushan by Ishikawa Kinichiro, titled Niitakayama in Early Winter.
A collection of four large color photographs of mountain vistas by Mai Jue-ming (麥覺明) near the exit come somewhat as a surprise and signal to the visitors that their journey from the spiritual to secular has come to an end, and tells them that this is as far as they will experience such grandeur without actually climbing the mountains: A pair of climbers’ boots and a pickaxe right by the exit serve as reminders of the rigors of such an expedition, and perhaps the frailty of humans in the face of such majesty.
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Photo: Doruk Sargin
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Photo: Doruk Sargin
Photo: Doruk Sargin
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