If you want me to say something I could say I see an Image
German artist persona REICHRICHTER sees the whole exhibition title as an image rather than two clauses, “An image transfers what was into what is, or what is into what will be. How does language become an image without being visual? How does an image become language without being decisive? A work of art which is made 50 years ago meets me today. The art, that is the result of this encounter, happens in the present. This encounter is the contemporary. The work of art does not remain the same. Nor does a city. Accelerated by the financial markets our contemporary metropolis is increasingly formed by structures of 'flows' that hinder the anthropological layering and deposition of experience, of stories and narratives. The activities of living/inhabiting (German: 'Wohnen') resemble activities of making art.
The work of REICHRICHTER takes root in the relationship between human beings and the living environment and focuses on the discussion of “place” and “non-place” while exploring ways to reflect daily dialogues and spatial structures through conceptual artistic expression. This exhibition features two installations that take up the two gallery rooms of MOCA Studio. The House and the World interweaves parallel narratives of video, sound and text, leading viewers to traverse Cologne, New York and Taipei. Through interviews and dialogues with local residents day after day, the artist vividly delineate the urban texture and space of the city we inhabit. A Million Words Away is a new work created especially for this exhibition. As an outsider to the Taiwanese art scene, REICHRICHTER upholds the spirit and curiosity emblematic of contemporary art practice, and studies the starting point of conceptual art in Taiwan while addressing the important relationship between art and thinking as well as art and philosophy.
In this exhibition, REICHRICHTER employs a diverse range of media and content, including photography, video, sound, text, mapping, drawings, objects and interviews, to gradually construct their international projects and local observations. The artistic vocabularies that seem to voice dissimilar ideas in the gallery rooms have, in fact, steadfastly woven an elaborate and intricate urban image.