About the Exhibition 

This exhibition selected from "U-mkt Open Call 2017" was an experimental art practice which focused on merging digital technology with urban architecture.

Ut pictura poesis (A picturesque poem) , « comme la peinture, la poesie » –  a poem is a picture (image). Words are a way to express images, they present a visible yet non-present poetic image. 

Resting in the older part of Taipei, U-mkt is an experimental art space. Here, Ut pictura poesis questions the definition of the "local/foreign" and the "new/old", and from there, develops a discourse on how technology, space, and the modern human interlay and coexist. Choosing the "re-presentation" of a historical city – almost like a déjà vu – as the focus of the artistic process, this exhibition expands on how technology forcefully isolates human senses from the grey area between reality and the virtual. The "sense of distance" is the point of focus, which involves the fragmented memory that result from visual perception's "resolution". The habitual yet strange feeling of intuitive understanding, the unspoken distance within our hearts, or the distance between physical regions – they all affect relationships between people.

“The development of civilization easily deceives the human race into thinking they are invulnerable”

 Theodor Adorno, Aesthetic Theory.

In fact, the development of modern civilization cannot compensate for the situation we're in. The convenience of digital technology has surmounted our physical senses; resorting to the virtual realm created by a combination of our bodies and external media will not make our experience of daily life more authentic. Instead, through this means, an additional field of vision is generated in our senses.

This exhibition explores the forms of how technology implicates our senses, how industrialized digital products mediate the lives of the common people, and how artistic production interacts with life and technology. Furthermore, it analyzes the "form" of urban culture, and develops a personal and non-personal "relative pronoun" to understand the relationship between the daily and the uncommon.

Using a multimedia creation process to form the "landscape" and "face" of the modern metropolis, the works portray local people and objects, and viscerally recognize the difference in understanding between objects (as people or landscape) and objects (as artworks) when portrayed under the influence of technology. As the saying goes, "to look at a mountain, but see not a mountain", the works also attempt to reconstruct a "genealogy" of art under the incorporation of contemporary technology.

Curatorial Team Introduction 

C&G art group

C&G art group consists of artist Chieh-sen Chiu and Margot Guillemot. It is an art creative team focused on merging digital imaging technology with the pattern of cultural development.

Employing digital technology as the core basis of their artistic process, the team explores ways in which technology enters our daily lives, and applies this information into their process. How does one digitally reconstruct the possibilities of the urban landscape from intangible memories? Working from the regionality of people and landscape (this time setting Wanhua, Taipei as the context of artistic creation), C&G art group investigates how the contemporary human coexists and interlays with technology.

Date

10 June – 30 July 2017

Curatorial Team

Organiser | C&G art group (Chieh-sen Chiu, Margot Guillemot)
Co-organiser | JUT Foundation for Arts and Architecture
Exhibition Executive | Wei Huang

About More 

C&G art group
U-mkt Open Call