I’m now midway into my 5-day trip.
I woke up at 7.30am today instead of 7.00am, because the first spot on my itinerary will only open at 9.00am.
8.15am
The plan was to eat a huge decent portion at breakfast because I may not get to eat again until the end of the day.
I even went for seconds! I love the veggies in Taiwan. They’re so fresh!
9.10am
I reached the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts by Uber. Was quite surprised that admission was free even for foreigners!
Letting pictures do the talking again.
This was the first exhibition I went to.
This guy has really done everything! Oil, watercolor, charcoal, pencil, foil…
I took a picture of this because it was created with oil pastels. How amazing!
After viewing a very traditional art exhibition, I ended up in a postmodern art exhibition completely not by design.
Like this one here, it was created with oil on canvas, UV print, Ethereum paper wallet and dynamic ERC-721 NFT. Laugh die me. What kinda art is this.
This exhibition room was full of photographs. Each column represented one day and there are 365 columns in there.
It was a one year performance piece by the artist Sam Hsieh. Starting from 11 April 1980 to 11 April 1981, he would punch a time clock by the hour and take a picture.
This was his first picture. You could see it was taken at 11am on 11 April 1980.
The most amazing thing about this performance, in my opinion, is what does he eat that his hair can grow so fast?!
The highlight of my visit must be the National Art Exhibition surely.
This is the gold prize winner of…
… the oil painting category! It blew my mind away seriously. How talented can people get?!
This was the silver prize winner though. I admit it was lost on me. 🤷🏻♀️
This is the bronze winner.
What was amazing to me was the gravel…
This was selected but did not win. I like the colors used.
And the rose gold foil was really genius in my opinion. It really popped when viewed physically.
I thought that this was a painting I would have bought if I could, but now that I’m looking at it again, I’m not so sure.
The most meaningful part of this one…
… is the “hidden” words the artist had penned on both sides of the canvas.
This piece from the Prints Category was aptly titled Phase of Rebellion.
Solid centre versus the paper outer face adding consistency to the message.
The gold prize in the Sculpture Category.
I am not good at reading meaning into sculptures but…
Singapore has no utility poles! This one wouldn’t have won in Singapore. 😅
Bronze prize winner in the Watercolor Category. The location of this category was unfortunate because of the glare reflected off the exhibits.
I just wanted to highlight how impressive this was.
But the gold prize in the Watercolor Category was lost on me.
The gold winner in my mind is this one. For me personally, this was the best piece of art in the whole museum.
My favorite from the Photography Category because of the feelings it invoked.
This was also a sad piece from the Photography Category, especially after I realized it was in effect a photograph.
Unfortunately this QR code doesn’t work, I tried scanning it. It would have been a lot more powerful if it worked.
A close up of the QR code…
The ones I took photos of were the pieces that spoke to me but there were plenty of other exhibits. In total I’d spent 2 hours here and it could have been more because I generally glossed over sculptures, multimedia art and mixed media art. I also didn’t see calligraphy art but was not particularly keen to hunt for it either.
This museum was well worth my trip to Taichung!