Grand View Art Village hosted its second Open Studios event for the Spring Artist-in-Residence Program! The event kicked off with Japanese artist Maiko Sugano, who led a guided tour of the outdoor work shelter she built using locally sourced materials alongside the art village’s construction partners, as well as the tools used in her demonstration studio. Currently running her own studio in Taitung, she shared how her encounters with technical craftsmanship since arriving in Taiwan inspired her desire to learn and integrate these skills into her own practice.
Taiwanese artist Peng Hsien-Hsiang created an interactive space in the exhibition area using experimental paper-pulp stones and feet, inviting the audience to freely stack and arrange them, exploring the playful interplay of material, weight, and scale. Alongside this, he presented an extensive collection of portfolios from multiple series, tracing the rich trajectory of his artistic career. Reflecting on the theme of stones, two ballpoint pen drawings featured at the center of the exhibition space were developed during a recent residency elsewhere, expanding on his long-standing fascination with stone forms. His subtle, nuanced strokes and repeatedly layered lines endow the stones with a striking vitality, resembling the twisting of eye muscles—a creative conceptualization that, fascinatingly, stems from his experience with sleep disorders.
Emerging artist Hung Hsuan transformed the eggs of lychee giant stink bugs found on her studio’s window screen into a mesh installation on a glass gallery wall. These universally avoided insect eggs were reimagined as neatly arranged and scattered red-and-white spheres on a glass screen, catching the light to create a delicate bead embroidery effect that faintly reveals the characters for “Grand View” (Hongmei). Through this, the disruptive “bad” of daily life is beautifully transformed into an image of hopeful beauty.
In another piece, she used glue and pigments to replicate bird nests and bird droppings that spell out startling warning slogans, inspired by the signs commonly seen across the roofs and streets of Xinpu. Both bird nesting and the stink bugs represent the propagation of life; however, the flourishing of avian life brings joy to humans, making us willing to tolerate the ubiquitous bird droppings. The artist uses the language of art to interpret the traces of local life observed in Xinpu, recontextualizing them within the art space.
Hung Hsuan also led visitors to the area outside her fourth-floor studio, where a hole accidentally chiseled by construction workers created a practical need for the art village staff to mark a “hazard.” This prompted the artist to “decorate” it—intentionally magnifying the danger of the hole, she translated the fear of a potential hazard into a tongue-in-cheek focal point that can be calmly appreciated, effectively transforming it into a site-specific public art installation.
𖤣 Artists-in-Residence: Peng Hsien-Hsiang｜Maiko Sugano｜Hung Hsuan
● Residency Period: March 31 (Mon) – June 30 (Mon)
● Event Photos
