Chemin Hsiao's My Journey to the West
By Kevin Young
The Taipei Economic and Cultural Office of New York helped showcase the creative work of talented Taiwanese students by holding an art exhibition. The exhibit titled Zero Boundaries featured innovative multimedia works, interactive games, symbolic paintings, and unique photography images from 37 artists. The pieces represented a range of cultural themes to futuristic technological motifs. Zero Boundaries, is titled this name because it’s symbolic of how the artists should feel that there are no limits for them to make it into the industry.
To Gentlemen II by Yunyu Shih
The artists submitted their work and were the chosen to be featured in this show out of over 100 submissions. The curators hope to make Zero Boundaries an annual event promoting the local Taiwanese art scene. The artists were primarily graduate students studying at the most prestigious art schools New York has to offer from Parsons, NYU, and SVA. The curators may even partner up with the Queens Museum to display pieces there.
Rosalie Yu's Collaborative Self-Portraits
“It feels good to be here showing people what I do. It’s great to meet the other artists and fellow art enthusiasts,” said Graphic Art Designer Rosalie Yu, whose work converts 2D illustrations onto a computer screen using special drawing textures. Viewers were amazed that their 2D drawings of people could be recognized and transferred onto a computer model which brought their art to life. For instance coloring in the face of the 2D model green would turn the 3D model’s face green.
Formation by Yu-Yi Chen
In addition to displays like Yu’s, there were animation videos of cartoons, sculptures, drawings, and more interactive artwork. One piece that stood out was the creation of a game. Bruce Lan along with a team of other students showcased a historical war game based on popular first shooter games like Call of Duty. Lam’s game entails having the player act as an American journalist photographing and discovering crucial information about a World War II battle in Shanghai. The game used real photographs and facts from that battle in an effort to educate the players about a lost piece of history between the Chinese and Japanese. “My team spent over a month working on this project doing research. It’s amazing that we have been getting great feedback from the guests that are trying our game. We hope to expand it,” said Lan.
Hsiang-Lu Meng's Parts of A Whole
Another interesting piece was the art model displaying buttons strung together with the faces of different people embroiled on them. The faces had their eyes covered to symbolically represent that everyone is an individual. The artist herself, Hsiang-Lu Meng explained how this piece is very dear to her. “This work is my story about my experiences of coming from Taiwan then moving to America. Taiwan has a very collectivist society where everyone conforms while here in America it’s all about being an individualist. I now see and prefer the American style of living,” said Meng.
Catherine Lan's In the Mist of Lights and Shades
Overall this exhibit demonstrated the need to have artistic programs and helped aspiring artists network with other industry professionals. Viewers can look forward for more events to happen in the future. The curators couldn’t verify what would be next but assured guests that Zero Boundaries was only the start.
I-Wen Huang's Taimerica
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