Bifurcation of Confluence

In human history, many civilizations originated from places with entwining mountains and rivers. As culturally diverse country, Taiwan is a land of converging mountains and rivers with an artistic environment that promises abundance and vibrancy. The 2023 Next Art Tainan features ten winners of the award and fourteen invited artists/art groups from around Taiwan, bringing together their works of divergent creative media that engage in different topics and issues. With the award’s unique mechanism as the foundation, the Next Art Tainan takes place in ten art galleries/art spaces in Tainan and is presented through various context of dialogue.

The curatorial topic – Bifurcation of Confluence indicates the diverse issues concerned by the young artists, which demonstrate aesthetic ideas, generational viewpoints, as well as dissimilar socio-cultural aspects of the contemporary time. This multifaceted ensemble is an epitome that serves as a clue, reflects the reality, and points to the future. The process of its making is like peeling off layers, which grants a glimpse into the distinctive topics in the eyeline of the young generation and how these topics are addressed in their work.

While different meanings converge in the Next Art Tainan, interstices that promises the emergence of divergence also form in the process, diffusing endlessly into a wide spectrum of unpredictable dimensions of aesthetics. This process is echoed by the current mechanism of the Next Art Tainan, which fosters dialogues between emerging artists and those from different parts of Taiwan, opening up their creative systems that are still forming and evolving to various issues and forms while establishing the connection between art and society. Meanwhile, the Next Art Tainan also aims to inject new possibilities of references into regional and local art communities and the careers of individual artists.

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San-Hsueh Chang, “Group Portraits of Plants,” oil on canvas, 260 x 97 cm, 2022

本次獲獎藝術家大抵皆以視覺文化經驗出發，其中數名基於藝術形式與美學感性，以「藝術問題」延伸創作路徑。作為老屋再造的弎畫廊，張善學的作品嘗試呼應中庭栽植的大量盆栽，以他過去對於蕨類植物的情感與熱忱，追溯蕨類在冰河時期的地理路徑。黃蘭雅運用色彩鮮豔的壓克力材料，奇想式的建構一座想像的綺麗森林花園。胡晴雯則以水墨技法，呈現午後陽光灑落於住家陽台，斑駁映照在盆栽枝葉、窗花、磁磚的時刻，靜謐的呈現個人的心境感受。藝非凡美術館的紀沛辰，將臺灣招牌文化繪於旅法期間拍攝的歐洲城市，創造獨樹一格的城市叢林風景。李勇志則嘗試拆解消費主義所主導的城市景觀——霓虹招牌，在城市景觀演替之外塑形懷舊美學。

The winners of this edition mostly start from visual cultural experiences, and several of them extend their creative routes from the “problems of art” based on artistic form and aesthetic sensibility. At San Gallery, an art space renovated from an old house, CHANG San-Hsueh’s painting responds to the large number of potted green plants in the atrium, and driven by the artist’s love and zeal for ferns, traces the geographic pathways of ferns in the glacial period. HUANG Lan-Ya utilizes vibrantly colorful acrylic paint to create a fantasy-based, splendid forest garden born from her imagination. HU Ching-Wen uses ink painting techniques to depict cascading sunlight on a residential balcony. The tranquil moments of light shining on plants, patterned windows, and tiles, reveal her personal states of mind and feelings. At Mezzo Art, CHI Pei-Chen uses computer graphics to integrate Taiwanese culture of street advertisements with images of European cities taken during her stay in France, forging an idiosyncratic landscape of urban jungles. LEE Yung-Chih attempts to dismantle the cityscape dominated by neon signs – an epitome of consumerism, molding an aesthetics of nostalgia that is alternative to changing cityscapes.

 Lan-Ya Huang, The Forest, Mixed media, 2018-2021

Ching-Wen HU, On the small balcony, Silver foil、Mineral Pigments、pencil、Paper, 39 x 22 x 3.5 cm, 2022

第11屆臺南新藝獎「匯聚的分岔點」共展出24組藝術家的巧思，包含來自國內外的優秀藝術家，期望背景殊異的創作者們匯聚於臺南的同時，分岔出異質且多樣的聲音，更在新藝獎有別於臺灣其他獎項的設計與執行機制中，以推進藝術家鍵結藝術市場為主要目標之一，同時，也冀望結合公部門與民間的行銷、推廣資源，凝聚各方的文化量能與臺南的歷史底蘊，打開城市美學的品牌特質，並在城市中的十個不同點位各自綻放精彩的展演。

The 11^th Next Art Tainan – Bifurcation of Confluence showcases the ingenuity of twenty-four brilliant artists/art groups from Taiwan and abroad. It is hoped that confluence of the artists with dissimilar background in Tainan would bifurcate into heterogenous and diversified voices. Different from other art awards in Taiwan in terms of the design and implementation mechanism, one of the main objectives of Next Art Taiwan is to facilitate the connection between artists and the art market. Meanwhile, the award also aims to combine marketing and promotion resources of both the public and private sectors to unite the cultural energy from all fields with the history of Tainan to unveil the city’s urban aesthetic characteristics as a brand that bloom into respective yet equally outstanding exhibitions in ten locations in the city.

Exhibition Title | Bifurcation of Confluence
Participating Artists | 
– San-Hsueh Chang (Award Winner)
– Lan-Ya Huang (Invited)
– Ching-Wen Hu (Invited)
Exhibition Dates | March 16 (Thu) – April 15 (Sat), 2023
Opening Tea Reception | March 25 (Sat), 2023, 3:00 PM – 4:00 PM Tea Reception, 4:30 PM – 6:00 PM New Art Award Art Salon