9.5. | VERNISSAGE

Tai-Mingh Dynasty

This exhibition is a part of a project about Taiwan. We visited the island last year for few weeks. It is a place where old tradition plaits with new tech and mass production. The selected works represent a reaction to this extraordinary juxtaposition of cultures. Tai-Mingh Dynasty stands for a new order, precisely how old crafts have changed into means of low cost manufacture of fake products. The art market has been affected by fake artifacts since Song Dynasty (11th century). It started with counterfeiting traditional artworks to making fake popular foreign articles in 70’s and 80’s. Nowadays the borders of this illegal practice have gone even further. There seem to be no rules at all. You can find not only fake products but new designed things labelled with well known logos. The word original has no meaning at all. In this case everything is accepted. Products are labelled not only with one, but with two different logos. Sometimes they even combine multiple logos in a bizarre sign. It does not matter if the statement on t-shirts it is grammatically correct or not. As a consequence of this counterfeiting phenomenon a multitude of absurd products generated a new kind of aesthetic. Impressed by this phenomenon we created a series of new original works. In which the term original means nothing of course.

Anita & Markus.