Exhibitions-wonderland garden

 

Wonderland Garden Public Art Model Exhibition ─ Exhibition Concept

The Taipei Songshan Tobacco Plant, built in 1937, was implemented based on the Industry Village concept, and it also incorporated what was considered to be a very advanced design at that time in Taipei with its factory courtyard garden layout.  This, once the largest tobacco plant in Southeast Asia, concluded its operations in 1998, and the Taipei Songshan Tobacco Plant then officially became a chapter in Taiwanese history, with its elegant garden neglected and forgotten.  However, in the recent years after the site took on its new position as a flagship base for the design and creative industries in Taiwan, the Taipei Songshan Tobacco Plant woke up from its years of hibernation and entered into a new exciting phase as the Songshan Cultural and Creative Park.  In 2013, laureate of the Pritzker Architecture Prize, Toyo Ito designed the Taipei New Horizon Building situated inside the park, and with this masterpiece, a surge of new energy was ushered into the Songshan Cultural and Creative Park and ignited a new art and cultural renaissance in Taipei.

The Taipei New Horizon Building is operated by the Taipei New Horizons Co., Ltd., an entity jointly initiated by Fubon Land and Taiwan Mobile, which, in 2009, signed a Build–Operate–Transfer (BOT) contract with the Taipei City Government as the legal operator of the site.  The Fubon Group has been devoted in the areas of urban planning and aesthetics for many years, with endeavors incorporating art into cosmopolitan areas to create different cultural features in Taipei.  With the Taipei New Horizon Building launched this year, entities from the cultural and creative industries are invited to take residencies on location.  With the formation of a diverse platform and with the energy embedded in the Songshan Cultural and Creative Park from the site’s extensive history, the location has become a new designation where culture, art, and creativity fuses, as the contemporary cultural creative industries integrate.

The building is based on the architect Toyo Ito’s green architectural design with natural ecological concepts, with the Taipei New Horizon Building coexisting harmoniously with the surrounding Songshan heritage clusters.  To echo the iconic masterful design, three permanent public artworks will be installed at the public space of the Taipei New Horizon Building, and it is anticipated for these artworks to reflect the memory, history, ecology, and cultural context of this distinctive location.  The shared theme of these three public artworks is the Wonderland Garden, which is inspired by the English author Frances Hodgson Burnett’s iconic and celebrated book published in 1909, The Secret Garden.  In the story, a secret key was used to open up a desolate garden, and through the children’s passion and creativity, the garden was revived, and the new found energy gave the estate a sense of hope.  Art and creativity are the keys that have opened up this secret Songshan garden, and with the Wonderland Garden Public Art Exhibition, the artists will use their dynamic creativities to infuse into the site organic energies, and these cultural sceneries will be integrated with the Taipei New Horizon Building through the binding power of art.  With the Songshan Cultural and Creative Park’s few features, the location’s historical significance will be connected with contemporary cultures and the art and creative industries, as the building becomes a spotlight destination through its link with history and the contemporary time.

The artworks for the Wonderland Garden Public Art Exhibition will be officially installed by the end of 2013.  The contributing artists HSU Yung-Hsu, HUANG Lan-Ya, and HSI Shih-Pin will present works inspired by the natural ecology, vegetations and animals and to represent the continuous cycle of art and creativity.  Their artworks will be incorporated with the Taipei New Horizon Building’s circular curves of multiple sizes designed by Toyo Ito, as they echo with the new building and the historic heritage site and take home in its natural garden.  The intention is for the art to create a dialogue with history and culture and also to bring out the innovative pioneering ambiance projected by the Taipei New Horizon Building.  The Wonderland Garden Public Art Model Exhibition will present previous works by these three artists and also the models of these future site-specific works.  The objective is for the audience to learn about the exhibition contents and the artists’ creative contexts and styles.  At the same time, it will also act as a preview for the artistic implementations that will happen at the end of the year 2013 at the Taipei New Horizon Building.  The model exhibition will be an opportunity for the public to interact with the artists and to take part in the creative process of the Wonderland Garden Public Art Exhibition by bringing more rich and diverse creative energies to the Taipei New Horizon Building.

 

wonderland garden：http://www.husart.net/wonderland-garden/en/index.html

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