Summer Holiday—A Solo Exhibition by Tim Yip

2010 / 06 / 11 Fri.

2010 / 08 / 08 Sun.

10:00 - 18:00

  • Curator

    Yuling Wang

About

Tim Yip’s rise to worldwide fame began after obtaining the Academy Award for Best Art Direction for the movie Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon in 2001. His multidisciplinary works maintain consistent aesthetics while exploring fields such as film, theater, television, costume design, space design, photography, painting, and literature. Hsin-chiang Kao, former editor-in-chief of the China Times literary supplement section, once referred Tim Yip as “a name difficult to be labeled.” The artist’s cross-media, cross-domain, and cross-cultural experiences have made him one of the most prominent Chinese art designers. Summer Holiday is a solo exhibition by Tim Yip designed exclusively for the Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei. In this exhibition, the artist not only incorporates his observations of Taiwan over the years, but also reflects his ideology and faith in the aesthetics of individual creativity. The works are integrated together with the historic building that is the museum, telling stories of a fictional girl named Lili, a symbol of the individual self who serves as a medium to examine the “I” as an individual versus the “I” as part of society. In truth, this fictional character represents you, me, and everyone living in this city; each visitor becomes the protagonist of Tim Yip’s summer festival. Tim Yip sees this solo exhibition as an opportunity to realize a socio-cultural project that represents his ideals and those of the people. With this objective in mind, he planned and designed the exhibition space from a theatric perspective. Tim Yip’s expertise in theatrical elements – such as space and atmosphere – allows the audience to have the rare opportunity to experience them firsthand. From outdoor to indoor and from public to private spaces, Tim Yip merges a wide variety of artistic elements including static photography, video, costume, sculpture, and installation. Each work shown in this exhibition follows a certain logic, showing the audience a Tim Yip they have never seen before and concluding with a Lili waiting to be introduced to the audience. In this exhibition, Tim Yip integrates local elements and images within his works. He captures Taipei at different hours of the day, serving as the background of Lili’s photographs and videos. It is the artist’s intention that through his design of Summer Holiday, the audience can participate in Lili’s story and at the same time draft their very own stories in the city.

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Artists

Tim Yip

Tim Yip, born in Hong Kong in 1967, is a multidisciplinary artist who works mainly in the fields of film, costume design, visual art, and contemporary art. He received professional training in photography at Hong Kong Polytechnic University. In his early career years, he worked in scene painting and as a photographer for the Hong Kong magazine City Entertainment. In 1986, renowned film director Tsui Hark offered him a job as art director for the movie A Better Tomorrow. Since then, Tim Yip and film have been inseparable.

In 1987, Tim Yip was gaining more and more recognition in the Hong Kong film industry. Despite that, he put a hold on his career and traveled alone across Europe in search of inspiration and spirituality. After returning to Hong Kong, his artistic ideology and persistence silenced him for approximately seven years(??I’m not sure what he stopped doing for seven years. “Silenced” is the wrong word. Maybe “kept him from pursuing gallery and museum exhibitions for approximately seven years”? This last sentence can be dropped without hurting the article.). In 1992, he participated in the shooting of the film Temptation of a Monk and became acquainted with the lead actor Hsing-kuo Wu. Tim Yip won the Best Art Direction Award at the Golden Horse Awards for the film. Afterwards, he returned fully committed to the world of film, theater, and television, welcomed with support and recognition.

Tim Yip is best known for his work on Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, which won an Academy Award for Best Art Direction in 2001. He became the first Chinese artist to obtain such an award.

The glory of the Academy Awards brought Tim Yip even more job and exhibition offers. Since 2002, he has held solo exhibitions in Taipei, Holland, France, the United States, Spain, Beijing, Hong Kong, and Shanghai. The content of the exhibitions focuses mainly on costume design; he successfully uses them to promote the concept of “Neo-Orientalism” aesthetics worldwide. Behind the glory, the high expectations Tim Yip has for personal creativity never diminished. To fulfill his artistic aspirations, he conducted two solo exhibitions in Beijing: Illusion of Silence in 2007 and Carefree in 2009. These exhibitions served as Tim Yip’s announcement of his determination to migrate from applied art to contemporary art. In 2010, the Summer Holiday exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei is his largest, most complete, and purest exhibition yet.

No matter whether it is theater, film, costume design, or pure art creation, Tim Yip insists that his works follow the ideology and architecture of “Neo-Orientalism” to the smallest of details. Hsing-kuo Wu once said: “Tim Yip came all the way from a poor artist who barely had money for coffee to a well-respected Academy Award winner for Best Art Direction. His journey has been hard and bitter. The amazing thing is that he never abandoned self-fulfillment or the pursuit of perfection. In every media – mainstream, experimental, large or small – he always worked diligently, and continuously read books to challenge and elaborate his personal philosophy.” This description of Tim Yip gives an insight into the artist behind the reputation and glory. Let this exhibition be an occasion for the audience to obtain a new and better understanding of Tim Yip.

The Origin of Lili

Written by Tim Yip

A non-existent individual manifests the reality of existence; is this object belonging to the physical world capable of sustaining the spirituality of the immaterial realm? Lili borrows the material existence of a lifeless form to explore the authenticity and possibility of the existence of an unknown dimension. Do other dimensions exist outside of the realm we know? Emotions trigger spirituality, even when it comes to the often-rational physical world! Lili is born under an expanding repelling force; it is because of this strong repelling force that she is allowed to sustain her non-existent state in the physical and rational world. For the transformation of Lili’s existence into reality (or to make her part of real memories), she must be shaped through emotions. Her existence is a motivation, a key for exploration, and a guide to the future digital world. The conditions for her existence are limited, but the spiritual nature she represents is timeless; Lili is not bound to a certain time, but frozen forever under an age that will never advance.

During the process of producing Lili, different experiences and cultural traces were combined in order to construct her story and understand her every aspect. In my first exhibition in Beijing, Illusion of Silence, the background environment of Lili’s existence was already coming to form. She exists in an “alternative world” that floats outside of the rational world, sharing the same source with the reality we live in. The “irrational” realm is our personal imagination and fiction, while being at the same time the source of all our imagination.

In my second exhibition, Carefree, I created the fashionable female character named Lili and set her in the rapidly growing Beijing – the old capital that was transformed suddenly into a modern city. The dialogue established between her and the city was one of purity and confusion, beauty and sorrow, and transience and eternity. Lili, with her majestic and timeless figure, was dressed elegantly and put in a public space where people come and go. The intention was to construct a dialogue that allows emotional communication and resonance between the work and its spectators. Lili represents the human desire for a perfect existence: youth, purity, emotional prowess, and a physique at its best; not only to enjoy the wonderful moments, but also to make those feelings constant and everlasting.

In this exhibition, Summer Holiday, Lili visits Taipei, a city rich in culture and local color. Incarnating as various characters, she travels between the city’s past and future while showing different appearances and complex emotions, as if struggling with her self-identity but at the same time eager to establish more multilateral dialogues.
The continuous exchange and clash between cultures enriches the historical context and local customs of a city, all of which are faithfully reflected in the art it breeds. Lili is in essence a creation born from spatial perception, while also including concepts such as temporal thinking and certain combinations of emotions. Despite being created from a vision of Orientalism, Lili can perhaps transcend all barriers and walk between the imagination of the future and the profoundness of the past; thus continuing to make contact with different cultures in different places, and to explore every aspect of the philosophy of human life.

Artworks

Space Lili
Existence
Facing Lili Facing Taipei
Flower Flow While The City Begins
Illusion of Silence
Glass Box
Earth Dance
Straying Dog & Collapse
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