In my recording works, I feel particularly interested in the intersection, transformation, and state of flow present in an “image”. Facing the limitations and qualities of filming a video, as well as the “representation” and medium of photography, I return to the basics of “space” as the subject I explore. Recently from my forays into Chinese poetry and brushwork, I connect to my thoughts regarding the possibilities of space. The three series A Slant of Light, Question to Shadow, and Cast Me with a Shadow were produced in this process consecutively, and is a collection of my different methods. Is there potential to bring together the virtual and real, transformation, and flow found in the spatiality of ink and water, with a modern spatial sensation of light and shadow, and further to present it in “video”? Under this examination, I chose to initiate from the space of the ink color and the space of the lines, and then reroute back to photography. In this in and out, I traverse the middle ground between these two spaces, and in this series of implementations, I see another potential space of expression for video.
I really like a passage that Shi Tao wrote in Bitter Melon and the Monk Philosophy of Painting: “The mountains, rivers and all things have their tangible forms, its negative and positive, its distortion and translation, its gathering and dispersal, its close and far, its inside and outside, its virtual and real, its disconnection and connection; its layering, its peeling, its volume, its furtiveness, this is the maxim of life.” When we see a landscape, what we see is not only the mountain. We come from an individual perspective to feel multiple layers of relations. Some of these relations express themselves as landscapes, some are more hidden auras. When one can feel these qualities, it means that something echoes on her or his heart. For example, in the particular moment when one’s heart twitches a bit when seeing a bare branch in the dead of winter, the existence of the world is different. It is like the world that a child feels instinctively, real and wondrous, and yet quotidian. I have always been trying to capture the objects of these moments. Using video to me has always been prophetic: it is this and yet is not. This looks like a paradox that cannot be (and needs not be) resolved; if you think about it closely, it bears deep meaning.
Collection of the Art Bank Taiwan