Preface

As Taiwan's first public museum of modern and contemporary art, Taipei Fine Arts Museum has always actively cultivated our museum colleagues to shoulder the responsibility of curating exhibitions. Walking the Crack is an international exhibition featuring works since the 1960s by 28 Taiwanese and international artists/art collectives spanning different generations, curated by TFAM senior curator Fang-Wei Chang.

This exhibition elaborates on the concept of "walking," employing a "multi-presentation" of diverse media and forms, exhibiting works in a diversity of media and forms, including two-dimensional paintings, experimental ink works, kinetic installations, performance and sculpture, video, related documents and objects, with the aim of initiating a conversation with visitors on multiple levels. At the same time, cultural studies scholar Li-Chun Lee was invited to develop a series of images and texts running in parallel with the exhibition, continuing and expanding the exhibition’s path of investigation and engaging in a dialogue with its works from the perspectives of image theory, cultural history and philosophy. This experimental approach to exhibition research and presentation has received an enthusiastic response from visitors, energizing the curatorial team.

This exhibition also features a selection of important works from the museum collection. Setting the exhibition’s themes in motion is Concetto Spaziale ("Spatial Concept"), a work by Lucio Fontana from the 1960s acquired by TFAM early on. Two linear slashes in the canvas concretely transform a twodimensional painting into a three-dimensional space, kindling the viewer’s imagination about the possibilities of "between." A new TFAM acquisition, the performance art documentary Pencil Walker (1996–2015), is an overlay image of life and art, and this exhibition marks the first major public unveiling of the work since its addition to the museum’s collection. Another acquisition, featured in the Taipei Biennial 2012, is Taipei Note: 2011.11.19–2011.11.28 by Pak Sheung Chuen. Unlike its display in 2012, here, lively short sentences composed in diary form are scattered in fragments in inconspicuous spots throughout the space, inviting viewers to ponder the imaginative connection between words and images as they roam the exhibition. TFAM has also achieved positive results by combining exceptional highlights from the museum’s own collection with lent works from several different institutions and collectors, as well as directly cooperating with artists.

I wish to express my sincere thanks to the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, the National Museum of History, Chimei Museum, and the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Korea, as well as private organizations and collectors, all of whom have lent works with exceptional generosity, allowing this exhibition to display an array of art spanning a half century.

This exhibition has been the result of collective effort and dedication. We are particularly grateful to the participating artists for their creative contributions. Finally, I am also thankful to the museum staff for their effort and cooperation, without which the exhibition’s successful launch and positive reception would not have been possible!
 

Jun-Jieh Wang
Director, Taipei Fine Arts Museum

Preface
Jun-Jieh Wang, Director of Taipei Fine Arts Museum

Essay
Walking / Lines / Cracks / Shadows: Some Thoughts on Walking the Crack
Fang-Wei Chang, Curator

Works
Natsuyuki Nakanishi 
Suling Wang
Pak Sheung Chuen
Jin-Hua Shi
The Otolith Group
Te-Lai Ho
Li Huasheng
Tai-Chun Chou
William Kentridge
Tung-Lu Hung
Janine Antoni
Ni Hao
Jingfang Hao & Lingjie Wang
Jiro Takamatsu
Kuang-Yu Tsui
Mona Hatoum
Chi-Kwan Chen
Hilo Chen
Hung-Chih Peng
Li-Juan Huang
Omer Fast
Shih-Chiang Yeh
Liu Yu
Han-Chih Liu
Yau-Horng Deng
Lucio Fontana
Noemi Marquez
Tehching Hsieh

Exhibition Research
A Guide to Roaming and Thinking / Li-Chun Lee

Introduction of works
Acknowledgements