帷幕臺北 Facade Taipei

Intro:
On May 2021, the Taiwan government declared a level 3 covid-19 alert, and galleries were prohibited from curating interior exhibitions. Therefore, I started to try to redefine the concepts of gallery space. In the Cambridge Dictionary, “Gallery” refers to a room or building used to display artwork, sometimes for sale. Inspired by the early careers of American artist Jean-Michel Basquiat and the renowned British Street artist Banksy, I imagined Taipei City as a building exhibiting works of art and not only building the connection between the streets and people’s lives but also bringing the artworks inside peoples’ life. 

The exhibit was held in January 2022, just after the lockdown in 2021, hoping it could attract many more people outside early in the new year. Furthermore, the last day of the exhibition was Chinese New Year’s Eve, which meant we had moved beyond lockdown.

There are many different spaces in the world, and the stacking of these spaces shows the past lifestyle of the Taiwanese, including dreams, private rooms, living rooms, gardens, companies, beer houses, nightclubs, music festivals, Yue Lao Temple, and other temples. Therefore, I collaborated with ten restaurants and worked with the artist to create ten works of art based on the founding stories and the character of the bars, and printed on PVC materials to paste on ten bistros’ facade glass. The works of art engaged with the people when they walked by the restaurants, saw the painting with the stories they had or used to have before the lockdown, and connected to their own life, which made the people happy at those very moments.