PIIRTÄÄ Le Noir - BLACK NOTEBOOK

L ’ I N T E R P R É T A T I O N : L'ESPACE NOIR

23 Mar - 18 April 2018

Good Studio is a cafe/select shop, managed by a branding consulting agency in Taipei, Taiwan. They have a spacious space with pillars that divide the space into open-plan compartments, and have been well known as an ‘experimental laboratory-like shop with white square tiles. In the beginning of 2018, they have reestablished the shop with a contrary look by turning the space of white square tiles into black, and invited PIIRTÄÄ Le Noir to be their guest brand in late March to mid April for presenting black notebook as their selected design goods of the month.

To connect the shop space with one of the design aspects of PIIRTÄÄ Le Noir black notebook, ‘Black Space’ is set to be the theme of the exhibition. Olievvp placed a customisation request at Ürobrous Studiolab, Taiwanese interior design studio, to create a nine grid metal frame (H90xW90xD30cm) as the main visual prop, and invited Hao Chun Hung, the founder of Ürobrous Studiolab, to join in the discussion about the interplay of colours and forms in spatial design.

The concept of “the space within book” introduced at Morioka Shoten exhibition in Ginza, Tokyo, has been blended into this exhibition through a collection of nine professionals who are either work in creative industry or associate to creativity in art and/or design. The nine professionals are Chung Hsuan Lan - Taiwanese artist, Matt Liao - Taiwanese photographer, Frank Huang - Taiwanese event curator, Sanma - Taiwanese magazine publisher focusing on Japanese culture, Martino di Napoli Rampolla - founder/creative director of artist residence Numeroveni, Robert Kim - Korean graphic designer, Yoshiyuki Morioka - owner of bookstore/gallery Morioka Shoten, Jiro Ando - Japanese graphic designer, and Olievvp - creator of PIIRTÄÄ Le Noir.

[ If you could only select one subject for photoshoot during travel, what’d be your view? ]

For Taiwanese artist Chung Hsuan Lan, contrail reflects to his minds, the moment of taking contrail photos is a time to refresh himself. As an artist, he pursues creating a signature piece of artwork that tells the story of his life. The contrail photos are taken during the trips in New York, Tokyo, Taipei, Kyoto, Las Vegas and San Francisco.

[ Talking about imagination in association to space, what would you picturize? ]

Japanese graphic designer Jiro Ando has infused his thoughts and fantasy about conceptual space on his black book by utilising the images from his Kekkai photography exhibition. Kekkai (結界 | boundary) is a black and white photography series about his ideas and thoughts over a Japanese superstitious act on the streets — that despite it has been proven to be ineffective, people still practice and believe in placing plastic bottles with bottle full water outside may expel stray cats from messing around, and such practice inspired him to combine his fantasy of ‘boundary’ with the use of water dissolvable paper on printing photography.

[ How would the outcome turn out if we only communicate through black and white images without any language explanation? ]

Taiwanese photographer Matt Liao has transformed the conceptual idea of edgy geometric forms that Olievvp has proposed to him into mellow poetic photos. This photoshoot series started from an idea to experiment a collaborative work on non-lingual communication for image production; instead of expressing photoshoot ideas in words, Olievvp presented to Matt some photos in black and white with a focus on the expression of light and shadow in modern architecture. This series of photos are placed in the metal 9 grid metal frame to depict the blend of physical and conceptual spaces.

[ What would bookstore owner interpret ‘black book’? ]

After the exhibition of L’INTERPRÉTATION: MON LIVRE NOIR at Morioka Shoten in Ginza, Tokyo during 2/27 - 3/4, Yoshiyuki Morioka, the owner of this bookstore/gallery revealed his talent in sketching on black book. He is also a paper diary person who always carries it around to note down important information and instant ideas. His sketches reflect his careful careful observation of details. The black book collaborative curation also brought Mr. Morioka and Martino to have interaction through illustrative images by drawing each other after Martino taking an interview there.

[ Travel x Creativity - Imagination is infinite ]

Martino di Napoli Rampolla, the founder/creative director of artist residence Numeroventi has presented his black black with a big surprise — by having his idea of Portable Art Residence fully completed during his stay in Asia and has collected stories and sketches of different professionals whom he has encountered in Japan, Taiwan and Bali. There are a lot to explore in the discussion about his idea of creative space and how he has shaped up the image of Numeroventi by his artistic sense and the collaborations with artists over the world.

[ When black book meets magazine editor ]

The black book of SANMA is like an anatomy of the team’s ideas. This Japanese culture magazine is founded by a Taiwanese talented team in Taipei, introducing Japanese culture by various facets, ranging from the tradition, cuisine, tourism to design, artisanal beauty and trends. They are the window for Mandarin readers to explore Japan in depth.

Olievvp created two pieces to express her inspirations from modern architecture that led her to launch PIIRTÄÄ Le Noir:

(1) artwork name: ‘Structure・I’; the first one under ‘Structure’ series, made by paper cutting under the idea of presenting “space in space” through a coexistent perception of flat (2D dimension) and volume (3D dimension); where a single page or open pages represents “flat (2D dimension)” view and the whole book itself represents “volume (3D dimension)” view. It is placed in the centre of this exhibition’s main display object - a squared metal cube consisted by 9 grid cubes in an integrated structure. (** ‘Structure・I’ is exhibited in Pon Ding with a hanging metal square frame.)

(2) paper cutting art of geometric picture on black paper and metal abstract stairs hanging in among the 8 cubical spaces of the metal cube to present the idea of the parallel perspective of composition and decomposition.