With “Made in Taiwan” exhibition coming to an end, Input/Ouput Gallery (I/O) is pleased to present our next Media Art Showcase, starting form 13th June to 5th August, 2012. Having introduced the distinct acumen and sentiments present in Taiwanese new media art scene, we would like to bring forth the first generation video artist from Japan, Professor Naoko Tosa and the rising star of the post 80s media artist, Tian Xiao Lei to our audience.
Naoka Tosa is an internationally renowned media artist born in 1961 in Fukuoka, Japan. After receiving a PhD for Art and Technology Research from the University of Tokyo, she became a fellow at the Centre for Advanced Visual Studies at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Professor Tosa explores the unconscious mind in her works and uses various mediums to visualize the state of unconsciousness. The unconscious has been studied in various areas including Surrealism, Jungian psychological analysis and cognitive science. Through photography, animation, video and installation, Professor Tosa strives to visualize images that rest deep in the unconscious level of the human mind and explore the relationship between communication and emotional intelligence; the conscious and the unconscious.
The artworks of Professor Tosa have been exhibited in the New York Museum of Modern Art, the New York Metropolitan Art Museum and Japan Creative Center at Singapore among many locations worldwide. In I/O Media Art Showcase, we will be featuring Professor Tosa’s newly created work in 2012, the Torso series. Torso, originated from the Italian word “torso” means the human body or the body of a tree. In this series, Professor Tosa uses Torso to represent human beings. Each torso in the series is treated as a movable container, in which totally different types of contents such as art and technology, Western and Eastern culture, entities with life and those without life can exist together. Through collaging and reforming images captured from previous video works, Professor Tosa depicts how new values and energy can emerge through the mixing of different contents in one container.
Tian Xiao Lei was born in Beijing in 1982 and graduated from the Digital Media Department in the Central Academy of Fine Arts in 2007. Tian expresses his creative ideas through multimedia works with digital animation videos such as Landscape 36.5 and Emptied and the digital prints, Landscape Skits. The Landscape Skits series is inspired by the classical Chinese mythological text, Shan Hai Jing and traditional Chinese landscape paintings. Through this set of virtually created utopias, Tian expresses his dismay in the gradually fading traditional Chinese culture. Combining digital media with traditional philosophies, Tian’s Landscape Skits strives for the Taoist ideal of constructing harmony between human and nature and ultimately to be able to fuse men with nature as one. The animation works, Landscape 36.5 and Emptied are emotional pieces evolved from Tian’s own dreams and explore on themes such as rebirth, reincarnation, karma, the self and the soul.
From Professor Tosa’s torsos to Tian’s digital landscapes, body and nature fused together forming one beautiful picture in the gallery. This is a rare opportunity in which the works of two generations of media artists are able to meet and be exhibited in the same space. Naoko Tosa, being the first generation video artist of Japan started creating media works since the 1980s and Tian Xiao Lei was born in the 1980s, the period where Tosa started to create her first video works. Interestingly, Tian though with different creative ideas, decides to use similar medium and expression method as Tosa does in his creative endeavors. The media is every changing, however, professionalism, creativity and passion towards art remains unchanged in these two artistic generations.
Input/Output Gallery will be relocating after the exhibition, Media Art Showcase and seek for new modes of collaboration in the future. We would like to take the opportunity to thank all art lovers for your dedicated support to our Tai Ping Shan site for these two years. We will keep everybody posted on our future developments and hope to see you all in our last and final show in Sheung Wan.
Update: Input/Output Gallery will have a revolutionary interactive work, the ReacTable, join the New Media Art Showcase. The ReacTable was conceived and developed since 2003 by a research team at the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona. ReactTable has been so well received in the musical circle that Icelandic singer-songwriter Bjork incorporated it into her 18 month world tower Volta. Input/Output Gallery is proud to present this legendary instrument to Hong Kong audiences in the upcoming New Media Art Showcase.
