For his exhibition “19:00,” Shih Meng Hsin brought the streets of Taipei into the gallery, the night into the day. Titling his show after the hour that the subtropical island finds itself cast in the neon pallor of nocturne, Shih dimmed the gallery lights into a permanent nightscape while installing a number of items familiar to any somnambulant wanderer of the capital city’s urban scene. Entering the space, one met streetlights perched on iron columns—though the normally erect columns had been twisted slightly, like Beauty and the Beast candlesticks paused in the middle of a welcome dance, or like somewhat less woozy cousins of Martin Kippenberger’s Street Lamp for Drunks, 1988.
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