Curator: Hwei-Lan Chang

The theme of the 2020 Next Art Tainan Awards Uneven Parallel is named from a verse, “Uneven amaranths flowing on the water, and I only search for the one I want,” in Guan Ju – a poem in the famous ancient anthology, Shi Jing (Classic of Poetry). The verse implicates searching the best and most suitable thing for a person. The naming also combines themes from author Ai-Ling Chang’s aesthetic viewpoint “uneven contrast” – symbiosis, layering, and contrast. The exhibition invites winners of the Next Art Tainan Awards and artists of different generations and cultural backgrounds from Taiwan, France, and Japan, to present their artworks. The artworks, including paintings, sculptures, mixed media, new media, are displayed diversely through space installations and “In Situ”. By gathering 10 exhibition venues in Tainan to converse and interact, personal memories and their relations with time and space are explored. Fractions of memories also reorganize the new possibilities of reading, including “Différance” between tradition and modernism, memories and imagination of the future, conversations between life experiences and history, the hustle and loneliness of the modern day, and layers of all kinds of circumstances.

This exhibition Uneven Parallel, with the participation of the audience, will influence the observation phenomena while attempting to construct the conversing relationship between two subjects. At the same time, the audience is invited to use “displacement” as their method to explore these ten exhibitions, external extensive “In Situ” displays, and an individual exhibition. By taking part in distinctive movements in Tainan, along with the exhibitors, the audience can construct a parallel universe with diverse understanding, observation, record and writing. The Next Art Tainan Awards 2020 will use the multiple interpretations of “Uneven” to present the connecting relationships between a microscopic scale to an enormous one, entirety to fragment, and soul to existing matter, instead of two complete opposites. We hope to offer an experience of being the subjects mutually, accepting differences and being inclusive. Also, through the conversion of images, paintings, and materials, the contrasted layering of space and material is depicted, offering imagination and inspiration to the surrounding reality.