10/03 Sat. 16:30
Opening  Reception

10/03 Sat. 14:30 Opening  Lecture 
 PAI Shih-Ming ╳ SONG Sheau-Ming   

11/01 Sun. 15:00 Themed Talk
CHEN Kuang-Yi ╳ SONG Sheau-Ming   

The contemporary era is an age when many believe that “painting is dead.”

Andrew Wyeth conveyed images he had in mind to the spectator with a highly delicate and realistic painting style, and has been known as the master of nostalgic realism. However, the artist called himself an abstract painter. For him, the image in the frame was never truly completed after the action of painting was finished. The reason is that there are elusive qualities hiding in the external natural world, which are assimilated into one’s being before they become attached to substantial objects – therefore, when the mind is at work and the consciousness flows incessantly, one’s affectionate remembrances of the hometown and sorrows for things in the past could only be perceived in quietude and revealed through gazing at the works of art.

This state of mind perfectly epitomizes the exhibition, Intertidal – SONG Sheau-Ming. Being in a foreign land and away from home, the artist thought about his hometown lying on the other side of the vast ocean, perceiving how the ceaselessly changing nature of water and sky reflected his shifting state of mind. He then captured memories and impressions of the coastal sea in an intuitive manner. In between the spectator and the mental landscape lies Song’s depiction of masking tape delineated with brilliantly realist techniques and placed in a subtle way on the image. This most noticeable piece of masking tape in the image is like an alternative “punctum” – in such tumultuous moment in the era of the Anthropocene, such juxtaposition of the abstract consciousness and the realistic simulation forms a window of contemplation, requesting the spectator to pause and observe before moving forward and into the space to be completed with one’s imagination. The dark, surging currents on the horizontally extending sea are mixed with memories of growing up and nostalgic remembrances; blended into this rationally meditated arrangement is the reminiscence of the days gone by.

The lyrical abstraction filled with thoughts is the representation of interweaving matter and mind as well as one’s rigorous struggles, visualizing the contemporary issue of survival. Before the coast in the distance, the surface of the sea with its toppling waves is asking us to question what we see and engage in the dialectic about reality.

What is real? What we need to answer this question is not to carefully examine the details but to truthfully feel them.