Date｜05.01-08.16.2026
Veune｜Taipei Fine Arts Museum
Curator | Feng Hsin
(Text / New Taipei City Art Museum)
Curated by Feng Hsin, this exhibition centers on works from the museum’s collection and brings together creations by 29 artists from different generations. The exhibition features a total of 87 works and series across a wide range of media, including charcoal drawing, oil painting, acrylic, photography, video, readymades, mixed media, and sculptural installations. Spanning nearly 90 years of artistic production, the works range from an oil painting created in 1936 by Ho Te-Lai to contemporary works produced today. The exhibition also includes three newly commissioned projects, alongside several collection pieces being presented to the public for the first time since their acquisition.
Materiality delineates the human way of life.
Every day from the moment we open our eyes, we find ourselves in a world defined by objects: the glass from which we drink, the clothes we wear, the space we inhabit, and the smartphone that transcends mere communication. Whether through food, housing, transportation, education, or leisure, every facet of life is enwrapped in materiality. To accommodate the complexities of living, objects are incessantly created, invented, optimized, and adapted. Through human use, these objects develop into systems that mold our instinctive, routine movements. Postures, habits, thinking patterns fundamentally altered.
From the 1970s, when Jean Baudrillard articulated his conception of sign value in consumerist society, through the 1990s, when Tim Dant and Bernard Stiegler investigated material practice, materiality has not solely been consumed or referential. Instead, it has morphed into a technology derived from the object through everyday operation, use, and perception, further configuring humanity’s behavioral patterns and social milieus.
This exhibition examines the profound impact of the production and circulation of materiality—from agricultural to industrial and commercial societies today—spanning from the intimate scale of our lifestyle, to the macro-mechanisms that propel and intervene in social function, as well as the forces lurking behind. At its core is the question of how materiality continues to generate the world within the realms of society, space, scale, and perception. How do artists across generations translate their sense of the times into material practice and experimentation, in turn responding to a vision of reality warped and transmuted by the act of making?
Chou Yu-Cheng's A Working History — Lu Chieh-Te (2012), awarded the Grand Prize at the Taipei Art Awards and later acquired by the museum, revolves around the life of temporary worker Lu Chieh-Te. His personal history was documented and published in book form, while the installation incorporates the blue plaid shirt he habitually wore. By bringing together biography, display, and material culture, the work invites reflection on the relationship between artistic production and forms of labor more commonly associated with everyday work.
Joyce Ho aims to integrate the deconstructed movements and fragmented slices of daily routines to convey an intimate, yet alienated tension between people and reality. The artist’s work simultaneously captivates and confronts viewers, rendering the quotidian action depicted in her work as a momentary ritual. In More, lint collected from a clothes dryer is transformed into a knitted sweater, rendering subtle and often unnoticed accumulations visible as material traces of time.
