text by Sun Xiaotong
Every person is like a shiny dot in the vast sky, flickering and moving within the infinite span of time and space. Quickly or slowly, together or apart, these dots emit their unique light in the boundless, dark universe to communicate with one another: it is like watching two stars about to meet, collide, and eventually explode. However, these are merely optical illusions. Those dots of stars only appear to meet or form constellations on the surface of the canopy of the sky. In reality, you are far away from those stars, and the distances between planets are vast.
Yet, this does not affect the unrestrained imagination of artists. From their perspective, everything that happens around them is nothing but clues to be interpreted or imagined. They perceive the hidden omens and fables in these clue-like messages. Errors, disappointment, and even rage become beautiful. Even ambiguous misconceptions and psychological dramas have a sense of beauty to them. Through artistic creation, artists become determined directors controlling the climaxes of a story through their will (which sometimes has some humor to it).
For the solo exhibition “The Geometry of Passion”, Chen Hui-Chiao mentioned that she drew the inspiration for her works from events that happened to some friends close to her. Yet, rather than creating a documentary of actual events or providing some clues for people to interpret, Chen tries to discover some causal relationships in the stories of her friends and uses a concise artistic vocabulary to transform them into logical visual expressions: Chen calls this “geometry.” Through this, some things are made clearer, more structured and defined amid the ambiguity and vagueness of passion. Yet, passion is still passion. Fluid symbols and reveries still lurk among the signs arranged on the flat dotted surface. There are no true answers to them. The artist’s intention is not to unravel some kind of greater mystery to life. Rather, the goal is to let viewers find the co-ordinates for some things worth remembering on certain time axes in the multiplying squares and circles.
Classifying Chen’s works as two-dimensional works, ready-made objects or three-dimensional installations is, in fact, irrelevant. For Chen, form is only the carrier of content. As an observer, I am more interested in the consistent ideas that lie behind the works. In “The Geometry of Passion”, Chen extensively uses ping-pong balls, metal panels and baking varnish, mounting one or several ping-pong balls on a smooth surface covered with baking varnish. This kind of simple expression is not something that just came to her mind from out of nowhere. Rather, the works are an “evolution” of Chen’s previous works. Ping-pong balls were previously used in two works: Bubbles of Perception- In the end is the beginning and Sound Falling II,featured in Chen’s 2006 solo exhibition, “Here and Now”. The former consists of a “bed” covered with a blanket with orange ping-pong balls, pearls and sequins sewn in it, combining visual glamour and tactile sensations. The balls symbolizing perception seem to be multiplying, while the mattress that accompanies births and deaths serves as a symbol for the beginning and end of life. However, the same ping-pong balls express something different in the latter work Sound Falling. This title reminds me of a line in a poem by Bai Juyi describing the sound of music, and turns the white ping-pong balls into visual symbols of aural experiences. As a result, viewers think of the crisp “pong... pong...” sounds made by ping-pong balls when they hit the ground.
From the two works mentioned above, one can tell that Chen does not endow ready-made objects with absolute referents or symbolic meanings. Rather, according to an inner necessity, she freely incorporates familiar, ready-made objects into her works. Through this method, those light spherical objects can easily shift from being bubbles of perception on a bed to suggesting abstract sounds within space. In Chen’s recent works, ping-pong balls are again placed at the center of the artist’s reality to reside within the geometry of passion. Chen is more concerned about the experiences and events behind the works. Using theater as an analogy, the exhibition would be the stage and the ping-pong balls would be the cast that has a good working relationship with the director. Following scripts with different plots, they present the joys and sorrows in the world.
Looking at Chen’s works over the past two years, such as Winter Sun from late 2009; The Silver Dust #3, Blue and Black, The Name of the Rose and Divine Comedy from 2010; and The God of Small Things/ The God of Loss, The Promise Shambhala, The Dots of Love, Shadow of the Wind, Seven Days and Night, Burning Sun,Blue Moon and Venus II from 2011, one finds that their titles can be combined to create a modernist poem. The imagery suggested by these titles greatly fascinates the artist. Most of them stem from Chen’s love of reading. Some titles are named after books, while others are derived from phrases in novels. Although these stories each have their own unique charm and provide different inspirations, Chen has no intention of interpreting their complex meanings. The stories themselves are not a medium for understanding Chen’s works. Rather than visualizing these literary works, the artist reflects on and explores her own state of existence through their rich and touching stories.
“All ideas are passion”. This is how Chen defines it. Thus, in this context, “passion” is literally omnipresent: in a flash of time, millions of passionate ideas are created and destroyed, like fleeting dreams or sand granules in a flowing river... Out of the billions of ideas, there could only be one that has the possibility of being materialized. In her daily life, Chen pays close attention to the flow of her thoughts. And, through her works, there is a slim chance that a viewer will catch a glimpse of themselves crossing the path of others.
Because of the simplicity and purity of Chen’s works, the iconographic approach is not suitable for analyzing them. Instead of trying to unravel the relationship between form and content, I prefer to make observations through methods of understanding a person. Reading and listening are paths to enriching an artist’s experience. Art-making and thinking are Chen’s methods of self-organization and self-adjustment. In her new work The Promise Shambhala , “Shambhala” refers to a pure land. This term is mentioned in the book Lost Horizon , from which the term “Shangri-La” originates. A utopian paradise, it inspires the artist to indulge in fanciful thoughts. As a result, Chen mainly uses three colors from Tibetan Buddhism that are common to sacred symbols: green, yellow, and orange. The ping- pong balls arranged in a straight line become a kind of boundary or indicator. Simultaneously, these intriguing “dots” constitute a vague and ambiguous zone for interpretation -- for the ball, there is no end or beginning. Every moment is a new beginning or end. This kind of religious, Zen and mystical feeling pervades Chen’s works from the past to the present. The artist seems to be leaving behind a trail of breadcrumbs for viewers to follow. However, when the viewers’ curiosity is aroused and they attempt to follow the clues to find an answer, they will find that they are going nowhere. All imagination and preconceptions exist only in your mind. No one will tell you which judgement is right and which choice is wrong.
Apart from being based on her reading and life experiences, Chen’s series of works reminds me of her many years of study of astrology. For her, astrology is not simply the knowledge of horoscope, divination, fortune-telling or psychological counseling. The mythology, the houses of the horoscope, the fluctuation of energy caused by the aspects of celestial boides, and the natal chart based on the birth time of each person have a clear connection with this series of works by Chen. The shortest distance between two dots is a straight line, and the combination of a group of dots forms a plane. The artist’s romantic sensibilities lay hidden beneath the seemingly rational geometric shapes, - the most obvious example is The Dots of Love : a set of four works made up of cold and hard geometric shapes formed by spherical shapes at first glance. However, the four letters of the word “LOVE” are embedded within.
I decided against reading and understanding Chen’s works from the perspective of art historical tradition, because unlike artists who place themselves in the context of art history, Chen displays a more immediate and intuitive quality in her work - in creating art, she does not intend to echo, subvert or inherit anything, or pay tribute to a particular person (of course, this does not mean that she ignores or is oblivious to the historical context). Instead, she actively chooses a more unrestrained posture, placing herself in a material environment that is more open and less burdened by restrictions. In this solo exhibition, the only work that uses materials and arrangements differently from the others is the piece Between Us . It is an installation that comprises a mirror, ping-pong balls, and cups with water in them. All the objects are placed on a mirror, so that everything is doubled. Through this, reality and virtual reality gaze at each other. Chen stated that whether it is a friend or a lover, people are always trying to find their other self. Yet, whether that is self-projection or fate, searching for the lost half of one’s self or an everlasting desire to make ourselves whole is purely a matter of one’s interpretation.
In this noisy and lonely age, Chen leaves behind a story to be continued for herself and for others. These stories will play out tranquilly and wilfully like flowing water. In between dots and lines, the boundaries of a map of life are delineated. There, among the minimalist and pure squares and circles, the dots acquire meaning and the poetic possibilities of passion.
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