展覽：福利社區運動中心
媒材：物件裝置
地點：視盟福利社，台北
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個展新聞稿：
Free yourself 紀紐約個展 － 台北市中山區「福利」運動場開放
文｜佟孟真
坐落於台北市第一條南北向高架道路旁的 FreeS Art Space 福利社展場，即將變身為社區型福利場所，提供居民免費使用各項運動器材，並解放你我對於運動的想像。甫於台南結束駐村的藝術家紀紐約，將其拓異空間的創作脈絡繼續向北輸送，於現場裝置六項運動設施，在規則取消 / 異位的肢體變動中，提供運動者重啟回應技術的身體經驗，也考驗時間變位後的慣性空間思考。
如同紀紐約的命名來自於一場方便彼此記憶的狀態下開始，他的作品也常因人與空間考量而進行現製，由主體變異到集體分享，再從中發展相對關係。1983年生於高雄，畢業於彰化師範大學美術系碩士班的紀紐約（紀凱淵），求學期間自繪畫訓練系統轉為對空間 / 身體、行為 / 關係的緊密探討，在陸續於嘉義鐵道藝術村、新樂園藝術空間、台中二十號倉庫、打開當代、竹圍工作室發表作品與一系列國際交流展後，去年的《運動三部曲》系列作品分別於台南齁空間、高雄弔詭畫廊與台北寶藏巖進行發表，藉由運動物件與事件場域的介入挑起空間自身的異質性觀看。今年八月在草埕藝術工作室的駐市計畫中，紀紐約重回台南發表 / 擁有了一間實體店面「ㄏㄡSTORE」，當起了傢具店店長，身兼店員角色也聘請櫃台小姐進行中英產品導覽服務，一肩扛起行政與業務的煩瑣流程，以「開店」來回應他對身旁手製傢俱創作者與城市歷史紋理的觀察，亦顛覆藝術家在創作狀態中的角色。
紀紐約在作品中的讓位與消失，令人想起電影《失魂》中金士傑所扮演的送信人。為了回應張孝全的提問「這井有底嗎」，金士傑說出了「你怎麼會覺得這世界上每個東西都有個底呢」，這樣的對話若在紀紐約「Free Yourself」展場中，也許能重新繪製出一幅藝術眾（重）生相。此次「Free Yourself」展覽計畫除了回應紀紐約去年創作所關注的「運動物件與地方身體」，也在這個獨特的地下室展覽空間裡，回應「福利社」一詞所代表的公共想像，發展成一個民眾可自由使用且盡情參與作品的運動場域，藉由重新操作運動本身（桌球、撞球、彈珠檯、飛鏢、冰壺與高爾夫球），觀察身體在看似熟悉卻又陌生的物件前如何發展出一套新的技術去面對，以及如何在既定規則外，重新找到回應姿勢，展現身體的獨特性。
在持續的遷徙游移狀態中，紀紐約由城市到身體的局部變革挑出彼此敏感體質，在遊晃生存技術的練習中產生共享分生的讓位關係，進一步將藝術想像推進現實生活脈絡，創造出新的身體過渡型態。若游移是為了對準自身座標，好可以隨時對環境做出反應，那麼等待變異便是紀紐約反覆出入的運動原型。
「Free Yourself：紀紐約個展」自10月4日展至11月1日，在相對於台北市
中山運動中心的角色易位中，歡迎全民一起到新生北路地下室享受福利運動。
Free yourself – Solo Exhibition of New-York Chi:
The Sports Center with the Best “Welfare” Opens in Taipei
Written by Sandra Tung
Located on the side of Taipei’s first north-south expressway, FreeS Art Space is about to turn itself into a community welfare center, allowing residents free access to various exercise equipment and liberating our imagination about exercise. Right after his artist residency in Tainan, New-York Chi continues transporting his artistic narratives about space alienation to the north. He puts six exercise devices in the exhibition space, providing exercisers with physical experiences to reactivate the responsive techniques in the physical movement with regulation removed or displaced as it challenges the habitual perception of space when time is shifted.
Like the name of New-York Chi comes from the convenience of mutual memorization, his works are often created at the site and based on the specific condition of the space and the persons. Beginning with subject variation to collective sharing, Chi develops the comparative relationship from the process. New-York Chi (Kai-Yuan Chi) was born in Kaohsiung in 1983 and graduated from the Department of Art at National Changhua University of Education with a Master’s degree. In his school days, he turned from the systemic training of painting to a detailed exploration of space/body and behavior/relationship. His works have been showcased at Chiayi Railway Warehouse, SLY Art Space, Stock 20, Bamboo Curtain Studio, Treasure Hill Artist Village, and other international exhibitions. Last year’s Exercise Trilogy Series were shown at Howl Space in Tainan, Crane Gallery in Kaohsiung, and Treasure Hill Artist Village in Taipei respectively, encouraging alienated viewing of the space itself through objects of exercise and the space where it takes place. In Art Square Taiwan’s artist-in-residence project, which was held in this August in Tainan, New-York Chi returned to the city to exhibit/start a real shop “H-o-w-l Store,” where he became the owner as well as the shop assistant of the furniture store. He also hired other female shop assistants for product introduction in both Chinese and English. In this shop, he had to take care of the complicated process of administration, management, and marketing. The shop became his response to his observation on the furniture handicraftsman in the neighborhood and on the history of the city, as it also challenged an artist’s role in art-making.
By handing over the artistic authority in his works, Chi reminds us of the messenger (King Shih-Chieh) in the film Soul. A Chuan (Chang Hsiao-Chuan) asks him that “can you see the bottom of the well?” The messenger replies “why do you believe that everything has a bottom?” If the conversation took place in New-York Chi’s exhibition Free Yourself, he might be able to recapture a “painting of faces /rebirth of art.” The exhibition project of Free Yourself not only makes a response to “the objects of exercise and the body in the space” – the artistic concern in Chi’s works last year –, it also answers the public’s collective imagination of the term “welfare center” in this unique basement exhibition space, which is developed into an exercise space allowing residents free access to both the facility and the artworks. Dealing with sports (table tennis, billiards, darts, pinball, curling, and golf) in a different way makes it possible to observe how body develops a new technique to manage the familiar but yet strange objects as well as how body repositions a responsive gesture outside the well-accepted rules to show the uniqueness of body.
In a state of constant variation and migration, Chi selects the sensitive ones from the city’s partial variation to body’s, sharing the places with one another through the practice of a roamer’s survival skills. It further pushes artistic imagination into the real-life narrative to create a new transition for body. If roaming is to target one’s position so that one can take immediate action to the environment, waiting for variation should become the prototype of sport which New-York Chi frequents.
Free yourself – Solo Exhibition of New-York Chi will be held between October 4, 2014 and November 1, 2014. Opposite to Taipei Chungshan Sports Center, Free yourself invites everyone to enjoy the welfare sports in the basement under Hsinsheng North Road.
