20 Oct 2022 Art Taipei
Spectrums of Space and Time: The Garden of Forking Paths
“…Time is comprised of innumerable series, diverging and converging parallel temporal lines weaving into a tangled, unending web. Through the merging, separating, interweaving, or coextending web of time, all possibilities are contained.” – Jorge Luis Borges
The ideological enlightenment and technological innovation of the Industrial Revolution prompted the scientific field to give rise to a high degree of exploration in the material world, with increasingly more emphasis on the dissection of objective reality. Under the development of quantum mechanics, science has trended away from ontological investigations into the nature of things toward an epistemological rethinking of the possibility of knowledge. Related concepts and deductions have led to a view of the physical world as an expression of the movement of awareness, and ideas like the paradoxical life/death state of Schodinger’s Cat open up the possibility of exploring multiple worlds.
The state of different spectrums of space-time, as described in Jorge Luis Borges’ work “The Garden of Forking Paths”, in myriad moments of divergence, space-time will superimpose into chaotic, uncharted states of entanglement, thereby increasing into numerous distinct phases. In the transforming fabric of space-time, every moment of reality portends the limitless variation of past and future. In this exhibition, nine artists from home and abroad are cordially invited to share the theme of “The Garden of Forking Paths”. From this epistemological perspective split into dimensions of reality, nature, organism, and fantasy, heterogenous shapes of multiple space-times emerge.
In the creations of exhibition participants are gazes focused on perceptions of the real world with reverence and care: using portraits as metaphors, Lo Chan Peng projects concentrations and reflections on current societal trends in religion, war and strife, and cultural turmoil; Liang Yu-Hsuan uses personal spaces as themes, emitting flashes of tribute to memories and commemorations of existence through representations of momentary disillusionment. Others embody secluded realms where consciousness hovers and lingers, commuting between natural symbols nurtured in classical Eastern and Western aesthetics: Li Tingting returns to the winning, utopian scenery of traditional irises, orchids, and aromatic herbs, a retreat to idyllic gardens of stillness and tranquility; like an image of hordes of flowers converging under the firelight, Hung-Ju Kan stirs the surging waves beneath the seemingly harmonious, inquiry into modes of existence that are in fact hidden within a magnificent stream. There are also those who choose to manufacture a different occurrence of former glories and future transformations of material culture through the yearnings and longings of the organic body: Liou Shiuan-Shi turns machinery and kinetic energy of antique part indentation into installations that integrate a combination of historical memory and scientific imagination; Wu Xsu-Yao collects cybernetic structures from the periodic table of elements, touching upon explorations of mortal forms and eternal existence in a mix of the organic and the material. In addition, there are still some who rely on scenes reminiscent of childhood fantasy, laying speculation on the world of experience: Liu Hui Chung hovers in seemingly dream-like supernatural boundaries through the personification of objects and methods of realistic transformation mirroring the contradictions and absurdities of life; The strange shapes of Jesús Aguado’s conspicuous fables portray the true satire of a sugar-coated world; Zhang Xiaoli chose Lego-like elements that are a combination of modern amusement and consumerism, stacking together living environments.
Although the skill and subject matter of the exhibition’s nine artists each have their own distinguishing characteristics, all of them in fact contain observations and perceptions of real life and societal culture, their creations embodying the various contemplations and possibilities revealed in space-time’s diverging nodes, extended into the personal subjects of living realities, ecological imagery, life’s manifestations, and living circumstances.