Anton Alvarez: How Long is a Piece of Thread?

Since his first visit to Taiwan in early September 2015, Swedish-Chilean artist Anton Alvarez has been highly inspired by his trip to the National Taiwan University Museum of Anthropology, and got inspiration from the colours of traditional costumes by local. The duration of his second trip in Taiwan in 2016 is about 10 days, he uses recycled cypress wood to create large-scale wrapped fiber installation artworks on the first and seventh floor of XUE XUE White Space since the very first moment he arrived. Additionally, Alvarez uses recycled cypress wood from Taiwan Glass Hsinchu Old Factory to create large-scale wrapped fiber installation artworks on the first and seventh floor of XUE XUE, and then completed jointly by students and faculty from Department of Commercial and Industrial Design at Taiwan University of Science and Technology.

Alvarez positions himself as someone who are both an artist, inventor and designer. He has invented an electric thread wrapping machine, which can take Chinese ash trees or pine woods wrapped in a variety of different colors from polyester fiber threads and make them into an organic creative design piece. For him, his objective is to focus on the creative aspects discovered in the system, tools and the overall process of making products. His works and exhibitions can be seen all over the world, including past shows at the Museum of Contemporary Design and Applied Arts in Lausanne, Switzerland, Design Museum in London, and Daelim Museum in Seoul amongst others. Also holding solo exhibitions at Gustavsbergs Konsthall in Stockholm, Sweden, and Salon 94 in New York etc. He has also been a mentor of Design Workshop “Believe in Intuition: Improvised Cooperation” at Boisbucher in 2014, co-organized by Vitra Design Museum in Germany, Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, and International Research and Education Center of Culture and Agriculture (C.I.R.E.C.A.) in France. Applying methods of teamwork, Alvarez guided the participants to study materials and furniture productions as well as develop new ways of thinking design. He has succeeded in fusing basic materials with varieties of elements in open and groundbreaking ways to complete his unique works of art.

This solo exhibition titled “How Long is a Piece of Thread? — Anton Alvarez solo exhibition” runs until 15 May 2016 at XUE XUE White Space, Taiwan.