文 / 蘇珊
Artist Chiu Chao-tsai's exhibition is a refreshing change, in that we are encouraged to look, listen and touch
"Look, but don't touch" is what one often encounters in a staid art museum and which turns off many viewers. Artist Chiu Chao-tsai (邱昭財) defies that dictum with his exhibition titled The Object Park of Gravity, which could be renamed "Look, listen and touch."
This viewer-friendly exhibition has no dark overtones or deeply embedded metaphorical meanings and its lighthearted message is especially appealing for those cynics who think that contemporary art is a scam that tests/offends their intelligence and for those children who truly despise going to museums. Chiu's fun-filled playground-like solo show combines gravity-defying moving sculptures with sound that only comes alive through audience participation.
Chiu is a young artist who is beginning to develop his vocabulary of images, his repertoire of symbols, and so on, by using common objects such as funnels and ball bearings to create sculptural situations of repetitive motions.
A row of metal funnels with their tubular endings connected acts like a musical instrument/pinball machine. Place the tiny silver balls into the top funnel and watch them spin around furiously as they race to the bottom funnel while producing a zinging sound.
A small ladder propped on a table becomes another interactive sound toy when the viewer places the wooden carved figure on the top rung. Gravity quickly pulls the full-figured female clacking down to the bottom rung.
In the center of the gallery space, a grove of elongated bumble bee-striped tubes sounds like Guatemalan rain sticks which give off buzzing and humming sounds when spun around.
In another work, a long row of connecting glass funnels again operates under the principle of placing a small ball in the top and watching it spiral downwards, and is reminiscent of making music by tapping a row of drinking glasses.
Chiu is the most successful in his work when the viewer's action causes displaced movement in another part of the sculpture, thus illustrating the concept of cause and effect. Sitting on a yellow ottoman, the sculpture acts like a pseudo-whoopie cushion by noisily inflating brightly colored party horns installed as limbs on a nearby potted plant.
The strongest piece in the show, and a crowd favorite, is the Chinese garden. A round bench of red cushions surrounds a small fenced-in rock garden with tall stalks of bamboo. Sitting down on one of the cushions activates the bamboo, which then bends over one's head. It surprises the viewer in a way much like the old Candid Camera gags of inanimate moving objects following unsuspecting participants.
A black-and-white scintillating pattern painted on a table brings the work of Op Artist Bridget Riley to mind. The unstable table surface can be touched and tilted making various sized balls slide around. It's an absurd game table that can't really be played. It has no function. Is Chiu saying in his work that art has no function too, but that perhaps it can be fun, absurd and just cool to look at?
Published on Taipei Times
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/feat/archives/2004/05/02/2003153889
Sunday, May 02, 2004, Page 19
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