Tang Contemporary Art is pleased to announce " The Traces of Light”, starting on April 22 at Beijing 1st Space. Curated by Fiona Lu and Shiying Wang, the group show focus on 6 artists’ works: Armin Boehm, Chen Yingjie, Liu xizi, Frida Wannerberger, Xie Xuanxuan and Yang Yueqi.
Mystery comes along with the flashing light, which is invisible yet unknowable, and sensible yet unstoppable. In Plato's allegory of the Cave, firelight becomes the source of approaching the truth. No matter whether in East or West, there is always a halo behind God. The inability to comprehend light produces distance and expectations from it. Light also represents hope. The visible light is colorful, silently reforming the world. Unlike natural light, electrical one starts to fill the whole world, and humans rely on it around the clock. Light gives life, even space and time can be illuminated by it.
Under the limelight, exposed to the blue light from the screen, the image's object becomes the moving target of attention that has to keep ceding one's psychology and privacy. The interpretive standard of the body and mind has ended and become the receiver’s in default by the luminous screen and the signal transmitted at light speed. As Vilém Flusser believed, the center of the visual occupation penetrates around without being crowded. The luminous body is forced to every corner but it is isolated in the "cocoon." The ability of self-construction enables people to entertain themselves and stay alone. Therefore, "fairy tales" become an appeal.
Artists use their works to explain their positions that the body is the medium or method for the experience. In Yang Yueqi's work, human images convey the meaning and atmosphere of solitude, reflection, and gaze within the void environment similar to game scenes in the symbolic method of detaching from realism. When Liu Xizi portrays the commodity, she also depicts its landscape and objectification with symbolic character, embodying objective rationality in her expression of artistic form. Xie Xuanxuan is sarcastic yet shiny in creation, and her loose brushstroke reveals a serious experience of "euphoria," just like the gesture of a "luminous body." In Frida Wannerberger's creation, the human images in the dark background are clearly outlined, revealing the "innocence" in the strong contrast with the background. The color tone in Armin Boehm's still-life is bright and calm, emphasizing the "emotional" expressions of color and structure by comparing geometric color blocks. Chen Yingjie infuses the body's dynamic energy into the work with a flowing quality. Also, the presence of artistic conception is subtly reflected in the action.
Courage needs to depend on oneself and others. In an environment of flow experience and relationships, identity and need become the blindage that needs to break. The light of the self is like the extension of the body’s emotion, constantly plunging into different concepts and systems in difficulties. Like the popular "masks" worn on the face and to be replaced, they are becoming objectified poetry from the skin to the body, radiantly and sparkly.