Curator
Phuan, Thai-Meng

Taipei National University of Arts, The School of Fine Arts’ Outstanding Art Prize serves as an important platform for young artists from the school to showcase their artistic achievements and establish themselves to the art world outside of the ivory tower of academia. The Outstanding Art Prize divided into two categories: creation and curation practices. The awards winner was selected by the senior professors from the School of Fine Arts and to be exhibited at Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts. The curatorial concept of the Outstanding Art Prize of School of Fine Arts 2019 - (In)visible Space is based on the keywords: “People”, “Warmth”, “Space” and “Urbanization” which were discovered and developed from the winning artworks.

Under the framework of contemporary capitalistic society, the rapid development of urban and suburban areas has caused significant changes to lifestyles and spatial conditions across the world. This transformation is not as far as imagined, it’s not only exist in the ordinary living environment, but also widely penetration into our life and cultural values.

The artworks in “(In)visible Space” depicts various relationship within people, power and space politic in this contemporary social phenomena. Although the artworks in this exhibition convey a variety of uncertainties and anxieties toward the current social environment but it’s also filled with endless creativity and longing. In another hand, it's also showing how artists counter the complexity of today's social environment and using creativity, sensibility and action to outline their visions for the future.

The nine young artists who won the 2019 Outstanding Art Prize were Chen Chao-Tung, Chen Yi Wen, Hsu Yi-Ting, Maria Barban, Nowhere Island Times, Wang Yen-Ran and Yong Kian-Sam along with the curatorial categories winners Liao Szu-Han and Sun Chih Hsing. The exhibition will showcase seven young artists from the creation categories and along with one of the winning curatorial project “Arnimal” by Sun Chih-Hsing.