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NTMoFA launches exhibition "Places of Being – Space and Materiality in Taiwan's Avant-Garde Art, 1980-2021"

  • Date:2021-08-12
NTMoFA launches exhibition 'Places of Being – Space and Materiality in Taiwan's Avant-Garde Art, 1980-2021'

The National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts (NTMoFA) will launch a new exhibition titled "Places of Being — Space and Materiality in Taiwan's Avant-Garde Art, 1980-2021" on August 14, which details the artistic response to the abstract and avant-garde trends at home and abroad, and the creative revolution initiated in Taiwan in the 1980s. These include materials, space, creative concepts and expression forms that have influenced the development of modern and contemporary art in Taiwan.


Revolving around the theme of "being," 41 groups of artists are invited to participate in this exhibition, with 93 works of up to 87 groups of artists on display. This exhibition uses the two key concepts of "space" and "materiality" to explore abstract art and avant-garde concepts since the 1980s. After the 1980s, the artistic environment has also undergone colossal changes. For example, after many artists who studied abroad returned to Taiwan, they established the three major domestic art museums and local cultural centers one after another. The changes of these times promote the creative energy of artists, foster media diversity, spatial conditions, and redefine material concepts introduced into creation and aesthetic consciousness. Having completely liberated the art form from the confined of the shelf and the pedestal, artists move towards a more free and unrestrained innovative form of expression.


This exhibition uses six sub-topics to interpret the avant-garde artistic development of space and objects: "Framework Liberation," "Redefinition of "Sculpture," "Diversity of ‘Painting’," "Media Dialectics," "Space Field" And "Limit-Transcending Generations." By reminiscing the artistic events and creations of the 80s and 90s, to the development of contemporary art in Taiwan after the 2000s, the exhibition invites important artists of middle to newer generations to perform diverse interpretations across different categories and eras in combining the space and the objects, presenting avant-garde art in a systematic and dialectical approach.