► Exploring the Synergy between Travel and Studio Practice: Yao Jui-Chung Solo Exhibition Artist Talk
Date: 08.05.2023 (Sat.) 2:00-3:00 p.m.
Venue: Tina Keng Gallery, 1F, No. 15, Lane 548, Ruiguang Road., Neihu District, Taipei
Host: Zian Chen
Participants: Yao Jui-Chung, Lars Koepsel
◎ Free entry
◎ Admission begins at 1:30 p.m.
◎ Seats are limited, available on a first come first served basis.
◎ Sign up here: https://lurl.cc/bfsHXz
In an artist residency, some may explore the local surroundings, while others might write intensively or work alone in their studios. Engaging with local expertise and conducting interviews could also be part of the residency process. To celebrate the opening of Yao Jui-Chung’s solo exhibition, Invidia, at Tina Keng Gallery, we invite artist Lars Koepsel, who hosted Yao during his residency at Apartment of Art in Munich last year. Together with Yao and in moderation by curator Zian Chen, the conversation will explore how travel and studio practice synergize to inspire and shape artistic expression, as well as emerging, advanced format of residency practices.
Since the 1990s, Yao Jui-Chung has embarked on extensive road trip photography practices across Taiwan alongside critical writing and journalism on emerging art scene in and beyond the nation. Notably, his past residencies experiences in California (1997), London (2001), and Dufftown, Scotland (2007) have been pivotal in marking paradigm shifts for his formal and artistic styles. Yao’s recent residency in Munich’s Feldafing by Lake Starnberg resulted in a mesmerizing painterly travelogue that documents his residency experience. Ingeniously blending elements of fiction into everyday life, his series captures a captivating blend of artistic expression and storytelling, invoking, among others, the 19th-century Gothic novels emerge from ecological imbalances and the seclusion of castles, as well as the long-standing tradition of documenting travel experiences in classic Chinese landscape paintings.
Lars Koepsel, a frequent traveler to Taiwan and an artist active in diverse situations, will share insights to respond the topic from his experiences running residency programs but also via artistic collaborations, exemplified by the double solo at IT Park (2010), another pivotal artist-run space in Taipei’s art history.
Host｜Zian Chen
Zian Chen works as contributing editor for Ocula. As a writer and researcher, he collaborates with artists to develop alternative frameworks for thinking and speculation. Together with artist Ho Rui An, they’ve conducted a research residency in Duke Kunshan University (2023). He is one of the founding members of Pailang Museum of Settler Selves (2022–), an editor-in-residence for Compost in ICA NYU Shanghai (2021–2022), one of the editors for Made in Public (2022) and Arrow Factory: The Last Five Years (2020). He has also curated Production Fever 2008: Study Materials in Nida Art Colony, Nida (2022). In 2020–21, he was one of the founding editors for Heichi Magazine, an online journal for contemporary art in Chinese and English.
Participant｜Yao Jui-Chung
Yao Jui-Chung graduated from the Taipei National University of the Arts with a degree in art theory, he currently works as an artist and professor at the Department of Fine Arts of the National Taiwan Normal University. Yao specializes in photography, installation, and painting. The themes of his works are varied, but they all examine the absurdity of the human condition. His work is housed in renowned institutions and private collections, including the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taipei, New Taipei Art Museum, New Taipei City, Taiwan; Taiwan; Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts, Kaohsiung, Taiwan; National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, Taichung, Taiwan; Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, Australia; Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art Collection, Cornell University, U.S.; Bibliothèque National de France, Paris, France. he has exhibited internationally. In 1997, he represented Taiwan in “Facing Faces-Taiwan” at the Venice Biennale. After that, he took part in the International Triennale of Contemporary Art Yokohama (2005), Asia Biennale (2015), Sydney Biennale (2016), 14th Curitiba International Biennial (2019), XIII Krasnoyarsk Museum Biennale (2019), Taipei Biennial (2020), and Jakarta Biennale (2021). He received the Taishin Arts Award (Taiwan) in 2018, and the Arts & Business Awards from the Ministry of Culture of Taiwan in 2019.
Participant｜Lars Koepsel
Lars Koepsel is a German Artist and founder of Apartment of Art/Munich. Koepsel studied art history from 1983 to 1985. 1985 - 1988, he was trained as a gilder and church restorer. Since He has been coming back to Taiwan every year since 1993, and has built up a profound knowledge of the local art scene. In 2013 he founded Apartment der Kunst/apartment of art, a non-profit art space in Munich, which he since has directed and curated. With AoA he established an ongoing artist residency exchange between Munich and Taiwan.
In his art Lars Koepsel uses various media, handmade paper, old maps, old globes and puzzles from his childhood, which he inscribes. However, his works are predominantly characterized by the use of his handwriting. His text-based art is fed by transcriptions of entire books such as Dante's Divine Comedy, Plato's Theaetetus, Hanna Ahrendt's We Refugees, Erasmus of Rotterdam's In Praise of Folly, Marx / Engel's Communist Manifesto, and many other texts.
Koepsel's work has been shown in Germany, Austria, Norway, Australia, China, and Taiwan, at the German society of Christian art Munich, Neue Galerie Dachau, Künstlerhaus Vienna, Museum Villa Stuck Munich with M+M, Museum Kulturspeicher Würzburg, Kunstmuseum Bergen Norway with Kurt Johanneson, the QCA Gallery Brisbane Australia, the Dimension Endowment of Art Foundation (DeoA) Taiwan and other venues. On invitation of the No Measurements project, he participated in “CAMP notes on education” at Documenta Fifteen.
