Keep Opening Doors

May.17^th 2024 – Oct.13^rd
 

The curator and contributing artists of this exhibition, Keep Opening Doors, were all born when Taiwan was under martial law. Doors then opened when martial law was lifted on July 15th, 1987, and it feels like those of us who came after are standing by a crack in the doorway, peering back to the dark abyss of the past. En route to understanding history, as we set out to decipher purposes and circumstances that can be easily reduced and lumped together, those who came before us and have lived in those times are undoubtedly our best guides.

The ones guiding us this time are Tsao Kai (1929-1997) and Ou Yang Jian Hua (1928-2011). Tsao Kai’s poems use the imaginary to confront reality. To avoid being harmed in real life, he chose to use mathematical lexicons in his poems to convey difficult-to-explain and hidden truths, which have spanned across space-times and shared with each of his readers. The paintings by Ou Yang Jian Hua, on the other hand, employ reality to tackle the elusive, faithfully presenting that bygone period, which has been told but is difficult to see. With no place to hide and no hearsay, we are confronted with first-hand original sources.

see more : Keep Opening Doors On the Green Island