The term “Installation Art” has been commonly used since the 1960s, which connotes different objects presented by the authors in certain spaces for the purpose to interact with the audience. In the beginning of the 20th century, cubist artist Pablo Picasso applied collage and dadaist artist Marcel Duchamp expanded art materials to ready-mades. Later there were the assemblage and Neo-DADA in the 1950s, and Minimalism and Pop Art in the 1960s, a string of unusual production of objects and images facilitated the birth of installation art.
With multiple directional growth and changing qualities, installation art never slows down in spite of its increasing popularity. In the 1982 Kassel Documenta, German artist Joseph Beuys presented 7,000 Oaks to delineate his ideas for Social Sculpture, a revolutionary proposal gone beyond conventional sculpture or installation. It stimulated discourse on the history of auteur theory or anthroposophy. Another eminent example in the 1980s was French artist Bertrand Laviar’s installation of compound objects. The artist meant to emphasize the transformation of objects in the materialist viewpoint. In the 1990s American artist Jeff Koons gave objects new meanings with his hedonism(not absolute consumerism), and British star artist Damien Hirst brought up the possibilities of installation art to the extreme although his works of corpses were very controversial. Chinese artist Ai Wei-Wei, recognized as the most influential character by Art Review, has toured his Sunflower Seeds in ten museums all over the world within three years. These prominent examples demonstrate the changing but symbiotic relationship between installation art and conceptual art.
Installation art also is the least medium-oriented category since it keeps taking new definitions and at the same time resisting to be defined. We might say that, the evolution of installation art plays a crucial role in the development of contemporary art.
Quite a few historical materials and publications indicated that in Taiwan, the germination of installation art was indebt to creators trained overseas then coming back to Taiwan during the 1980s. The earliest grand event for installation art in Taiwan was the “Colors and Shapes- Avant-Garde, Installation and Space” staged in the Taipei Fine Arts Museum in 1985. When public museums were still swiveling between modern art or contemporary art and art projects employing conventional mediums, installation art rose in alternative art spaces since the end of the 1980s, and thrived throughout the 1990s to the beginning of 2000s. As public art became a major art business in the 2000s, a considerable percentage of temporary public art projects were installations, contrary to sculpture. Public art installations also interact with sculpture and create effects of hybridity. In the last decade, as the rise of technology art and new media art, interactions between all these artworks bring out an entirely new perspective for art and spatiality.
OUTLINE
Dated back to the 1980s, information of authors, artist groups and their installation artworks, art spaces and art events over the past three decades are systematically organized, combed and analyzed. The history of installation art in Taiwan is also discussed in the context of Taiwanese art under the changing social, political, and cultural climate during this period of time.
Selected information comes from relatively significant artists and artworks that considered worth to be studied, exhibited and archived. This section expected to be expanded with long-term and spontaneous supplement, including significant updates as well as further discussions.
This section attempts to reactivate comments and criticism on Taiwan’s contemporary art, not only on installation art but also on its moving intersubjective creation with other mediums. Hopefully there will bring up further possibilities for Taiwan’s installation art.
Setting out from “diverse keywords” and “multiple mediums”, installation art has a quality that naturally overlaps other types of creation. This database provides a multiple positioning of installation art for advanced search.
Many early installation artworks are no longer representable, thus the effectiveness of documentation is the ultimate goal of this section. There are still images(ex. Photos of artworks or art events) to be digitalized for searchable archiving for the public. Documented materials from journals, periodicals, exhibition catalogues as well as publications from art foundations, academic institute, art libraries, or materials collected by artists or artist groups are the major sources of this section. Four categories are established:
Artists- Biographies, news coverage, exhibitions, honors or awards and art events they’ve participated.
Artworks:-Formally exhibited artworks based on the chronicle of their first release. The formats are texts and images or videos that best present the works.
Events- events with considerable percentage or significance of installation artworks, such as exhibitions or performance. Authors and exhibited artworks, curatorial statements and images are included.
Art spaces/Art groups- Alternative art spaces and art groups that played crucial roles in the development of Taiwan’s installation art.
