Artist Statement

Those works are extract from the two books, “Visages de Taipei” and “Le Ventre de Taipei”. It has been shot between 2011 and 2016 in Taipei and New Taipei. It is not a pre-conceived, rigorous and precise documentary, but an interpretation of reality, a fiction that is echoing until the very first hours of the morning. It is about a nocturnal endless wander in the vast maze of Taipei small lanes, when the city itself has turned into a dream-like world. It is haunted by some wandering creatures that you won’t recognize by day. Under the weak neon’s light, some others are working hard to make the daylight city functioning. As the very famous Brassaï once said, “the night is not the negative of the day” …. 

About Hubert KILIAN

Hubert has settled in Taiwan in 2003 and has been Taipei-based French journalist until 2016. In 1996, he began his photographic odyssey and quickly fell under the spell of the cities ‘landscapes and empty urban spaces. Fascinated by marks left through times on walls, he uses photography to blend past and present, to freeze the course of time and to record his own emotions. For over two decades now, he has been working to decipher the cities and to capture the atmospheres carved by the lights and shadows of buildings. His work seeks to expose the relationship between the city dwellers and environment that conditions and transcends them. Thus, he reveals the dramatic potential of this great spectacle of time and people passing by and of stones that remain. He has exposed in Paris, Taipei and Kyoto. In 2018, “Visages de Taipei” has been published, followed by “le Ventre de Taipei” in 2022.

Hubert Kilian: LE VENTRE DE TAIPEI
Date│06.11.2022 – 07.17.2022
Opening│06.11 2022 @14:30, Tours @15:00
Photo Talk｜07.02, 2022 @15:00 Hubert Kilian & Shen Chaoliang
Curated by│Edward, I-Chien CHIU (Tokyo University of the Arts, phD)
Location│1839 Contemporary Gallery
TEL│02-2778 8458
Open hours│Tue.-Sun. 11:00-19:00

Curator│Edward CHIU