The city is the defining space for all modern people, it carries the cultural achievements of modern man, as well as their dreams and disappointments. No city is just the buildings in it, rather each city is made up of a countless number of living, and complicated individuals. In the corner of this city, we can see on the bodies of those lively and true individuals that any time’s contradictions and absurdities must be shouldered by the individual. It is influential, profound, and forceful for every individual living in these times.
In Lu Hsien-ming’s work, the development of the modernization of the city and the relations between individuals constantly reappear. His road bridge series was started in the 1990s when Taipei was rapidly developing, when he turned his gaze towards the rising modern architectural monuments. This product of industrialization symbolizes the spirit of a city, however behind the larger narrative of this modern spirit, Lu Hsien-ming turned his sights towards the main part of the city, that is the changes to the people and their time spent within the city. Modernization has sped up people’s lives, making things more convenient and has increased the speed of everything. It seems as if it has become an unstoppable trend that has reached every single corner of the earth, but behind this trend, behind the bright and beautiful honors, countless numbers of individuals are still living, and bearing the burdens of the changes and developments in society.
Curatorial Statement
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way…
- A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens
In A Tale of Two Cities, Dickens gave shape to that clashing, vibrant era in which he lived. It was an era when people encountered unprecedented dilemmas; the making of the era stemmed from its own historical lineage as well as the constant barrage of changes it weathered. As the historical metaphor for Lu Hsien-ming and Kuo Wei-kuo’s solo exhibitions, The Tale of Two Cities signifies both the reality we must confront and the possibilities of existence.
There is an ideal homeland in everyone’s heart. Such idealism is often the embodiment of the search for proactivity. The two artists’ works here come together in this manner to explore the context of human life and the circumstances of reality. Starting from the massive social changes happening throughout the 1980s in Taiwan, the artists transform social issues into the impetus for artistic expression while striking a stance of inquisition. Or, we can say that in both Lu and Kuo’s artistic responses to the reality they must live in, they address the pressure forced upon the individual in the social space, the cultural space and the historical space. At the same time, they document the mutation caused by such pressure.
In terms of artistic style, the works of both artists are extremely symbolic in nature; they displace and remix images, spaces and symbols, and reorganize mundane objects through theatricality in order to concentrate and distill real world issues, creating a whole new kind of tension among the everyday objects. Such tension not only contributes to the uniqueness of the artistic style but also further examines the real-world issue at hand.
Both Lu Hsien-ming and Kuo Wei-kuo attempt to trace out the clues to the development of Taiwanese culture, the human and existential predicament on this tiny island under the advent of urban development and modernization. Both point to an ideal homeland outside of reality, where slices of this age mingle with the rise and fall of men and society, the disillusions and fantasies of the individual and the masses, and all that has changed and is still changing.
Kuo and Lu performed a tale of two cities with their exhibitions; these cities of individuals overlap each other, embodying each other’s conflicts and hopes. In the physical architecture of MOCA Taipei, we can at once detect the history that our city weathered and the cities of the artists’ visions. For both artists, the cities of their heart refer to the people and happenings right here right now, all those silent glimpses of cities and gardens of spirit.