DAILY CONVERSION

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MUMU Gallery showcases artworks of four artists from the 2017 Next Art Tainan. Their artworks originated from their rich observation of daily life. and even demonstrate their re-thinking of stylized-creation.

Ying-Chen Lin’s(林盈潔) “Maybe There is Nothing Happened Opposite the Playground, but I was in a good mood.(也許操場的對面什麼事也沒有發生,但我心情愉快) is a record of her painting activities . Standing outside the window , looking at the reflection of scenery on the window glasses, she reproduces what she sees on the windows . the video camera is placed indoor and records the process of how her strokes fill the side of the lens with colors and landscapes. From this side of the audience’s viewpoint, we see how she freezes a frame of a certain image at a certain moment on the aluminum window panel. Or we can say, she sees the landscape outside and reproduces it indoor. We see how she converge daily images into some kind of results in drawing. The back-and-forth brushes and strokes represent the journey where the artist repeatedly gazes, looks back and reconfirms the things the exist. The landscape is blocked by untidy bushes and shrubs ,a micro-analogy of this work – a lump of obscure objects occupied the most conspicuous spot. Painting, as a process of observation and disclosure , dose not really reveal anything secretive. In the contrast, Lin’s portrait outside the window is the copy of the copy of the landscape behind her . From the perspective of the audience, her creation, stroke after stroke, conceals the visible, actual existence that we just confirmed.

The history of painting has never departed from the issue of representation—how and what to represent, especially when it comes to scenery painting that reflect the relationship between painters and the nature , or everything about human and the environment. Lin’s deals with the banal daily life landscape , the ordinary skyline of streets and valleys, buildings and cars in cities and towns , as well as the trees and bushes on the foreground. She shoes and represents the reflection on the transparent window. The paint she uses and her painting highlight this process of description – turning illusion images into tangible objects . There exists an interface that exposing any aspect of the world . but to propose how painting can the front and rear of painting ourselves and the world , some kind of interface that feels good , and that exposes and conceals at the same time.

If we can concretely identify the border between the world of gods and human, it will be the interior of temples. In Li-Chung Lee’s (李立中)“Space Out”(神遊) series, he photographs the caissons and ceilings of Taiwanese temples. Some are umbrella-like sunken panels ornamented with layers of decorations, while some are painted with fairyland landscape. Juxtaposing with these traditional Buddhist architecture and aesthetics, Lee also includes in his photoshoots modern lighting fixtures, which almost serve as an ultra-spatial existence. These lights are at the very tip of the high ceilings, so they require a sufficient degree of power to the light up the entire space. Yet these lighting fixtures do not seem to fit in these traditional architectures or religious paintings, even thought their brightness does echo the spiritual level of this scene at this very spot. For people who frequently visit temples , the existence of these lights is often taken for granted and thus neglected. The way they are perceived are beyond the religious context, although that are embedded in highly symbolic spots. Some light installations are like UFOs circling in the sky , while some , because of their exposed light tubes , diffuse a sense of the high-tech or mechanical vibe . These bright illuminants , on one hand are exaggerated guidance that gives forth absolute brightness, and on the other hand resembles objects that belong to another time or space, misplaced in a scene that they do not belong to . This series of Lee’s photography works have a connotation to field studies , and has magnified the sense of bizarreness that is otherwise consented tacitly among the common people. Maybe when we look up and see these light that offer some guarantee of brightness, we have also sought the comfort of religion.

In his painting, Tsung-Yu Tsai (蔡宗祐) uses expressive stroke to present the various perspectives in life. His expression id highly intuitive and sensitive. He does not deliberately dwell on the details, so his works are very straightforward and subjective. Through contrasting colors, the images are full of