Hardback
Publisher: Taipei Fine Arts Museum
Dimensions: 20.5 x 20.6 cm
Pages: 191
Foreword
The exhibition "Small Is Bountiful: Margaret Shiu's Contemporary Art Collection" centers on the artworks donated to Taipei Fine Arts Museum in 2020 by Margaret Shiu, founder of Bamboo Curtain Studio, offering a view of the evolution of contemporary art in Taiwan over the last four decades. To express her gratitude to TFAM for encouraging her early experimental work and for being an important bastion inspiring her to embrace contemporary art, Shiu gave the museum 43 works by 26 artists, created with media ranging from ink painting, calligraphy, oil on canvas, printing and photography to video and installation. By virtue of her generosity, TFAM has acquired works by artists that were not represented in our collection at all, as well as supplementing our holdings of several artists with crucial works from different stages of their careers, providing us a more substantial environment for research with greater possibilities for expanding knowledge.
Margaret Shiu was an important champion of Taiwan's cultural and artistic development. She simultaneously played the roles of artist, curator and collector. By founding Bamboo Curtain Studio, she lent long-term support to emerging artists through both local action and international interaction, serving as a catalyst for a host of artistic experiments, and actively casting a light on issues of society, the environment and sustainability. The works in her donation were mostly acquired through serendipitous encounters in everyday life; hence, they tend to be small and were not collected according to any clear contextual system. Yet in them we can sense the passion that a worker in the arts had for creating a robust artistic environment, and we can glimpse how she provided impetus to the perpetual advancement of Taiwanese contemporary art through her acquisitions.
For example, one of the artists featured in this exhibition, Tsong Pu, returned from abroad in 1983 to hold a solo exhibition. At first, he planned to return to Spain after his exhibition, but when several collectors purchased his works, he felt encouraged and decided to stay in Taiwan, making it the main base for his creative endeavors. Later on, he discovered that Margaret Shiu had been one of those collectors. Tsong's small-scale work "Beyond the Yardstick" was later developed as the large-scale installation "So Near and Yet So Far". As his medium, he employed fortune rulers, devices employed in fengshui that today are only used in Taiwan, as a way to present the measurement of art in the artist's mind. This exhibition was organized to reveal the ubiquitous presence of such serendipitous connections. By displaying Margaret Shiu's collection of single or small-sized works alongside corresponding works of a larger series or full-scale installations, we can see the early works of many artists who later went on to striking achievements. As the creative ideas of these artists continued to take root, their explorations resulted in more extensive works, and this process illustrates how the act of collecting art exerts a profound influence on the artistic environment. We hope that in viewing this exhibition, visitors will be able to intuitively experience and explore these works and arrive at their own understanding, so that these works will no longer be a personal collection, but an act of sharing the love of art. For the successful unveiling of the exhibition, I wish to thank the curator, our own Sharleen Yu, as well as the TFAM Collection Department, for their praiseworthy efforts. As well, to all the participating artists, institutions and lenders, I extend my sincerest gratitude.
Jun-Jieh Wang
Director, Taipei Fine Arts Museum
Foreword by the Director / Jun-Jieh Wang
Curatorial Statement / Sharleen Yu
The First Stirrings of the Universe
Wang Te-Yu, Wu Hsueh-Jang, Jun T. Lai, Jenny Chen, Hsiao Chin
Boundless Imagination, Reality Unbounded
Tsong Pu, Chen Wen-Hsiang, Lin Hong-Wen, Tong Yang-Tze, Chen Hui-Chiao
A World Shaped by the Heart and Words
Mali Wu, Chen Long-Bin, Cheng Cheng-Huang, Cheng Ting-Ting, Hou Yi-Ren, Shi Jin-Hua, Huang Ren-Ho
A Second Surface of the Earth, Formed by the Passions
Chen Shun-Chu, Pai Chung-Chin, Huang Wen-Hao, Mei Dean-E, Tu Wei-Cheng, Yao Jui-Chung, Chi Kai-Yuan, Huang Chien-Hua, Liao Chi-Yu
About the Artists
Acknowledgements