To Exit, Post 1980s Neo-Abstract Art in Taiwan: Special Issue: History of Contemporary Art Studies in East Asia

Placing focus on post-1980s abstract art, this study aims to investigate how abstract art has been translated and transplanted into Taiwan through China, Japan and the U.S. in different stages. In discussing the drift from group to independent abstract from the 1980s to the present, and how abstract painting has been conformed in the Chinese- speaking world, this paper argues that what came with this very art form were experimental modes under specific socio-political conditions that artists aiming to transform and to exit from their existing boundaries and realities, and utmost, questing for democracy and their Taiwanese identity.