Exhibition tracing a century of surrealism to open in Taipei Saturday

Taipei, April 24 (CNA) An exhibition tracing the surrealism movement and its development over the past 100 years is set to open in Taipei on Saturday.

The exhibition, titled "Surrealism: Worlds in Dialogue," at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, will run until Aug. 30, and is the third stop on an international tour, following shows in Germany and Finland, museum director Loh Li-chen (駱麗真) said at a press conference Friday.

It features more than 120 works by nearly 60 internationally renowned artists and filmmakers, including René Magritte and David Lynch, with exhibits ranging from paintings, sculptures and photographs to films.

Among them are works not previously shown in Germany and Finland, such as "I Shop Therefore I Am" by American artist Barbara Kruger, Loh said.

"I hope that in this exhibition, you will put aside past understandings and re-perceive what we are familiar with at the intersection of dream and reality, discovering new ways of seeing," she said.

The exhibition was launched in Germany in 2024 to mark the centennial of the "Manifesto of Surrealism" by French writer André Breton, according to the museum's press statement.

Mainly inspired by Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytic theories and emerging in the wake of World War I, surrealism refers to a global cultural movement in which artists questioned existing social norms and traditional rational thought.

Noting the omnipresence of first-generation surrealists' works on tote bags, cellphone cases, in popular films and The Simpsons, curator Maximilian Letze said they "have proliferated in popular culture to the extent that we no longer really see them."

One of the exhibition's goals is to let visitors "rediscover the incredible radicality of these works" and their contemporary relevance, for which it places first-generation artworks in dialogue with those of later generations, he said.

Letze added that recent scholarship has shed light on the roles of women and female surrealists within art historical discourse, which the exhibition also highlights to present a more balanced picture of the movement.