Roger Tsai的部落格

Some reflections after appreciating "A Walk in Formosa --Kathrin Stalder's Solo Exhibition on Object" at Taichung Broadcast Studio.

                                                                Roger Tsai

A found object is a natural or ready-made object, or fragment of an object found by an artist who recombined and converted it to become an artwork. Nowadays "a found object as an artwork" which is indubitable in contemporary art.

Although everybody can pick up found objects, but the difficult is how to convert them to become an artwork, actually not everyone can do so, only an artist is able to achieve it.

Kathrin who comes from Swiss is one of the outstanding artist for converting found objects to become an artwork via her amazing idea and impressive form.

It was my pleasure to talk to her at the exhibition last Saturday, she sincerely shared her creative concepts with me and my family, also told us very touch story about her son and daughter-in-law incorporated into her work, so called "Memory dress". I said, you have a very young mind, like child who always keeps a curious and pure heart, that's why your works so interesting and so attractive.

I would like to share my feelings about Kathrin's works especially for "Object : Dis-cover-Island".

 "Object : Dis-cover-Island":

Kathrin tried to discover "Island " via found objects picked up by her at random when traveling to the preferred place around Taiwan just as the theme of her solo exhibition- "A walk in Formosa".

She wrapped found objects with pure white papers in order to transfigure the properties and characters of found objects , and to disburden their symbol as well. 

Eventually, All found objects are wrapped becoming to homogeneous material as sculptures which are lined up and laid on the horizontal white wooden rectangular box organizationally. In fact, found objects are present on-site, they just only are concealed. Found objects are solid color which evoke our remembrance to communicate with an artwork based on individual experiences.

In contrast with printing of found objects which are hung up the vertical plane, each position of found object mapping to the wrapped found object respectively, and it still owned its enhanced color and kept its original appearance, but it’s just an image no any concrete object, the original found object is absent over here.

We can see several pairs of interesting contrast in this artwork, such as color vs. solid color, present vs. absent, flat vs. solid, printing vs. sculpture(concrete object), representation vs. memory and so on.

She removed ('dis') the symbol of a found object ('cover') to see what object ('Island') really is? Each found object is related to her intrinsic experiences, it's kind of communication between Formosa and she, also kind of the way to approach Taiwan.

The meanings of an artwork are opened to viewers who interpret it according to their intrinsic experiences when appreciating it closely. I think that Kathrin's artworks can evoke viewers' memory to generate resonances of recollections because she picked up local found objects in Taiwan. 

I fully agreed with the concept of Arthur Danto about an artwork. Danto is America's leading philosopher of art , he argues that, an artwork is always defined by two essential criteria: meaning and embodiment, as well as one additional criterion contributed by the viewer: interpretation.

The 'meaning' comes from the concept of an artist, and is the content of an artwork; the 'embodiment' belongs to the form of an artwork. The concept of an artist is revealed by the form of an artwork which  also conveys the content of an artwork. 

Kathrin's artworks are exhibited at Taichung Broadcast Studio right now to be closed on 28th August waiting for more viewers to involve in actively in order to contribute their interpretations to enrich her artworks.

I strongly recommend my friends to go to the exhibition to enjoy her attractive and interesting artworks on-site to be obtained the uncontemplated harvest.

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More information about Kathrin's solo exhibition please visit the website as below :

https://m.facebook.com/events/306798532993826/

This article was posted on FB on Aug. 3, 2016.