Just after the Chinese New Year this year, K's Art was holding its 11th show. On display were a dozen or so "designer cakes" in antique cabinets with photographic "portrait close-ups" of the cakes hung on the walls. Look closer... on top of that rich chocolate icing there is a decorative shape that begins to look familiar, very familiar in fact: It's an illegal rooftop structure, like those that you can find atop apartment buildings all over Taiwan. And there on a terraced cream layer cake is a microcosmic urban landscape: A betelnut stand, embellished with red neon lights, a giant frame for billboard advertising that covers up the windows of the building residents, a chaos of shop signs, and a few dimly lit windows in the night that seem to be calling out "come home."

This show, entitled "Here and There," was the first solo exhibition by Lin Yuting, a graduate of the Department of Fine Arts at the National University of Tainan and now a middle-school teacher. She uses materials (especially lightweight clay and epoxy) that look very similar to a real cake, and, with professional-caliber pastry skills, recreates the unrestrained dash and zeal of representative Taiwan architecture in a bid to reinterpret the utopian dreams Taiwanese have about "home sweet home."

To complement the genteel ambience of this show, Ku Shih-yung, the owner of the space and a professor at Tainan National University of the Arts (TNNUA), specially gathered together old-fashioned Taiwanese furniture which appeared side by side with Lin's work. He never expected that these antiques with all their history would inspire a group of "technology artists" to come up with plans for an experimental exhibition that will "hide" art works inside furniture and in corners, where they will be activated by sensors picking up on movements or voices of gallery visitors nearby.

For Ku Shih-yung, the typical gallery or art museum is just too formulaic and uninteresting-it's usually white walls, solemnity, and a lot of rules and restrictions. He wanted to create a place that is filled with and connected to life. His space appears to be a private one, yet also a public one; some of the objects look like furniture yet also like works of art. "I want to make people feel a bit disoriented as to space and time, and to make it so that people's bodies have to make constant microadjustments, so that there is ongoing interaction with the space as a whole-now that is fun!"

"I like setting up dialogues between contemporary art and old objects, thereby creating interesting conflicts and contrasts." Sitting in the exquisitely designed bar corner, Tainan University of the Arts professor Ku Shih-yung sells crazy dreams, but says "Thanks but no thanks" to commerce. On the facing page are works from Lin Yuting's cake architecture series.

As for his exhibition philosophy, Ku proudly extols an "elitist system." But what he means by "elite" is not those people who sit up high telling others what to do, but those who take an interest in the overall cultural context and the conditions of daily life with more acuity and sensitivity than ordinary people.

Also, because he teaches at TNNUA, and has other "advantages"-for example, he frequently serves as a guest lecturer or advisor at other schools of the arts and often attends exhibitions by students or young artists-Ku says that he comes in contact with artists with great potential earlier than most people. In the past, he used to introduce the most promising students to art critics and encourage these critics to write about these young artists, but now that he has his own platform in K's Art, Ku is devoting himself to inviting artists of the younger generation with potential who have not yet had the experience of exhibiting their works to try their hand on this non-commercial stage that exists purely to promote exposure and exchange.

K's Art has become one of the "point men" in contemporary art in Tainan (the other main one being "inart space," run by Du Jhao-sian). He gets 300 to 400 visits a month, and scholars and gallery managers make a special point of stopping in.

It's worth mentioning that the artists who have had solo shows at K's Art over the past year have usually been subsequently sought out by commercial galleries, invited to participate in special exhibitions, or awarded prizes for their work. Ku has nothing but good wishes for these newly rising stars of the art world that he has helped along with his perceptive eye, and he hopes that these young people will remember to treasure the time they enjoyed in the innocence of his alternative space, will continue to carry on a dialogue with the lives of ordinary people, and will not be "co-opted" by the logic of the marketplace.

Ku, who as a young man hung around artistic circles and got used to the night life, has changed his schedule considerably now that he is nearing 50: first comes creative time on his own installation art, then teaching, then looking at old things, then back to K's Art where he holds down the fort. "A lot of things develop in a natural way, as if something were calling out to you and pushing you forward, so that you will feel regretful if you don't act. That's what creative work is like, it's not about feeling some kind of mission in life." That sums up Ku's perspective.

"I like setting up dialogues between contemporary art and old objects, thereby creating interesting conflicts and contrasts." Sitting in the exquisitely designed bar corner, Tainan University of the Arts professor Ku Shih-yung sells crazy dreams, but says "Thanks but no thanks" to commerce. On the facing page are works from Lin Yuting's cake architecture series.

Lin Yuting divides her work into two parts: "image" and "actuality.""Enlarged 'portrait images' of the cakes produce a 'serious, elaborately mannered' effect [as can be seen in the work on the wall in this photo] and the details are clearer. The cake models are accompanied by tableware, adding to the illusion and making the whole experience even funnier and more entertaining."