Tsubaki Noburu. Daisy Bell, 2014; polyester cloth; 700 x 600 x 800 cm. Courtesy of the Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts.

Tsubaki Noboru’s 2014 Daisy Bell (curator Kenichiro Mogi) dominates the entrance to the gallery. An artist who has continually reinvented himself since his involvement in the Japanese “mono-ha” painting movement, Noboru’s work references popular culture, myth, and Japanese tradition. Daisy Bell is a giant inflatable creature that looms over the spectator, at once cute and monstrous. This ambiguous, almost entirely featureless hybrid love-child of Jeff Koons’ Puppy and a creature from the imaginary world of a medieval bestiary insists, as soon as the visitor enters the exhibition, that monsters are already among us.

Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran. Pewter Dickhead 3, 2016; earthenware, glaze, gold lustre, platinum lustre, porcelain, twine, and human hair; 127 x 47 x 30 cm. Courtesy of the Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts. Photo: Simon Hewson.

Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran worked with curator Glenn Barkley to develop his characteristic totemic sculptures (currently showing in the Australian National Gallery, Canberra) into works on a monumental scale for the biennale, drawing on Hindu and Christian devotional iconography mashed up with pop culture references to superheroes and pornography. Nithiyendran’s “deities” exude raw sexual power, leavened by ironic humor and a playfully irreverent sensibility. Pewter Dickhead 3 (2016) is made of unfired earthenware—the artist wants these works to return to the earth after the exhibition closes, presumably leaving behind the remains of their adornments of gold and platinum lustre, porcelain, twine, and human hair. Like a voodoo doll or shamanic fetish, this creature with its gold claws and sharp pointy teeth is both charismatic and alarming.

Zhang-Xu Zhan. Inferiority Bat (Hsin Hsin Joss Paper Store Series–Room 003), 2014-2015; 6-channel video animation installation; 5 min. Courtesy of the Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts.

Taiwan’s thousands of temples are filled with the statues of innumerable gods. A drive through the verdant landscapes of southern Taiwan is punctuated by brilliantly painted tiny shrines and temples containing the figures of numerous gods, many of whom once walked the earth in human form. On the corners of the back streets in old towns, brightly colored puppet theaters perform, not for human children, but for an audience of the gods residing in the temple. Zhang-Xu Zhan (curator Gong Jow-Jiun) presents an innovative work steeped in this Taiwanese folk culture: Inferiority Bat (Hsin Hsin Joss Paper store series–Room 003) (2014-2015) is a 6-channel video installation that begins with the humble vernacular material of papier mâché. Generations of Zhan’s family specialized in the craft of making paper offerings and effigies for religious rituals and funerals, and he marries this tradition with video and new media, creating entirely contemporary works. With paper puppets brought to life by stop-motion animation techniques Zhan creates a fecund universe: plant forms hang on separate screens like creepers in a jungle, swaying gently, rising and falling, and seemingly moving in response to the hypnotic sound track. His tiny puppet theater teems with frantic activity, like battles between gods and demons. Beneath the eccentric charm of his work there is a palpable sense of loss; like so many other ancient traditions, Taiwanese paper crafts are in danger of becoming obsolete in a modern culture of mass production and the seduction of global brands.

Zhang Pei-Li. A standard, uplifting, and distinctive circle along with its sound system, 2015; electric motor and metal rotating device, 25 Watt cylindrical horn speaker, old style “Made-in-China” transistor radios; dimensions variable. Courtesy of the Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts.

Chinese new media pioneer Zhang Pei-Li (curator Lu Ming-Jun) is represented here by A standard, uplifting, and distinctive circle along with its sound system (2015). A circle of old-school Chinese transistor radios suggests a gathering, or a conversation round a table. A microphone on a long arm sweeps around the inside of the circle and picks up the individual sound of each transistor in turn. The suggestion of the long arm of the state apparatus of censorship and control is inescapable, representing a much more sinister kind of monster than the pixilated three-eyed creature in the biennale’s publicity material: this cute pop monster references the unsophisticated video games of the 1980s and 1990s rather than a dark creature of the fearful imagination. However, each artist in this biennale has recognized something elemental in the human spirit. Beneath the playfulness of many works, and beneath the everyday, lies a fear of the encompassing darkness, the monster lurking behind the curtains of the conscious mind. The pressing question posed by the Kuandu Biennale is whether art has a role to play in slaying the “monsters” of the modern world, whatever shape they may take.

Slaying Monsters, the Kuandu Biennale 2016, will be on view through December 11, 2016 at the Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts, Taipei.

Samson Young, "Biomechanics," 2013. Polypropylene paper, servo motor, 55 x 77 x 17 cm

This spring I visited the Museum of Contemporary Art Taipei to view The Innovationists, a show focused on new media art. The spectrum of technological works ranged from Ryota Kuwakubo‘s whimsical The Tenth Sentiment, which utilized a toy train’s LED headlight to project crisp then melting shadowscapes in a darkened room, and Samson Young‘s Dimension+, a floating spine-like structure of polypropylene paper, to Chris Honhim Cheung and the XEX GRP collective’s more dissonant and possibly migraine inducing Anadelta or Resonance Seed, an inverted triangle and hand wheel equipped with sensors that translated touch into flashes of light and sound.

Gregory Chatonsky, "Telefossiles I," sculpture and film installation, courtesy of Xpo Gallery and the artist

The museum’s second floor was dedicated to the works of Gregory Chatonsky, where his triptych, Telefossiles I, presented a post-apocalyptic earth after human extinction.

Chatonsky created the archaeological excavation on site to display eerie fossils from our time: laptop, gas tank, tub, fragments of machinery. Overhead, lamps illuminated sections of the gray, grainy blocks accompanied by footage of earth’s dead surface, ashen and cold, despairingly lunar. Telefossiles I relies on viewers to remember the present as past, and conjure a future where technological artifacts serve as the last testaments of life on earth.

Gregory Chatonsky, "Telefossiles I," sculpture and film installation, courtesy of Xpo Gallery and the artist

Gregory Chatonsky’s Dislocation VI, at the end of the collection, turned out to be a viewer favorite. On a weekday afternoon, every viewer on the second floor interacted with the EEG headgear and chair projection. The installation operated in two ways: concentration raised the chair image on the screen and mental relaxation or inattention caused it to fall. The installation guide suggested that I think of something like an apple. I tried thinking of a banana, but realized immediately that thinking “banana, banana, banana” and switching to a visualization of the fruit broke concentration; in short, these were two different thoughts. And because I was merely thinking of a banana and not a specific banana, concentration waned. The chair rose a little, and then fell. But when I visualized the furred ears of my dog, opaquely red in the sun, the chair shot up and exploded. In all, it took me about three or four minutes to learn how the technology and brain would work together.

Gregory Chatonsky, "Dislocation VI: The Attentions," 2012. Interactive nstallation, courtesy of Xpo Gallery and the artist

From Paris, Gregory Chatonsky wrote to me: “Beyond fantasies of reading the brain, the idea that we can correlate mental states and brain states, what interests me is how these helmets are changing our way of thinking. Technology does not describe reality, technology produces it.” He went on to explain that he has been intrigued with the conflicting states of attention and inattention, which the installation makes visual.

With Moore’s law, the exponentially accelerated rise of newer, smaller, and more powerful technologies every two years, Dislocation VI is an important reminder, perhaps, of the eventual integration of technology and the body. Chatonsky added, “It isn’t really the headset that reads the brain, but the brain that reads the headset.” This is also quite true, though, let’s hope that the outcome isn’t anything close to Telefossiles I.

Gregory Chatonsky, "Telefossiles I," sculpture and film installation, courtesy of Xpo Gallery and the artist