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| Distance in Memory-Chen Shun-Chu New Works Exhibition, 2009 |
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text by Lin Yi-Kuan
In retrospect, Chen Shun-Chu’s works entail a topical format: he employs volumes of family photos to file and sort the evolution of a person and the development of intricate ancestral history; this method is comparable to an ongoing chronicle. Accompanying him in the years of art making are numerous memorable life stories; Chen’s new series of work reveals the subliminal state in the creative process – memory. This autumn, 「inart space」 presents 《Distance in Memory》-Chen Shun-Chu New Works Exhibition, 2009. From over 20 years of black and white photographs, Chen covers these silhouettes of memory with clear acrylic medium, blending drawing and photography, preserving the fleeting memories in time.
History is a clamorous scene participated by many, but to face the past magnanimously, remembrance requires solitude. In these new works, Chen puts aside history’s collective consciousness and compiles a complete image of self. Having experimented extensively with installation work, he returns to the origin of image making in this exhibition and utilizes photography language to convey the essence of memory. The missing information resulted by the contrast of images resembles an emptiness in life; the absence of details outlines the ambiguous contours in time, reminding us that nostalgia derive from regrets. Memory is the absence caused by regrets and disregards; this “gap” is a reminder for us to treasure the moments in life. Blurriness in the works is a serendipitous condition, which invites the viewers to engage into the essence of memory – complex and bewildering. Fleeting memories are comparable to the incomplete state of underdeveloped photographs. Perhaps a subconscious way to reminiscence, the artist fills the pictorial background with grains. These silver particles form the images, insinuate at memory’s special quality of piling and collapsing.
Though the pictures imply the distance that memory can’t bridge, Chen Shun-Chu lets memory speaks for itself. Allowing it an optimistic outlook for the future, memory picks up the precious moments along the way, one word at the time formulating a Haiku, gazing at the déjà vu in the sojourn of life. Reality and illusion cross paths in these new works; the images are comparable to a nomadic poet marching into the future unaccompanied, composing poetries in the memory streams. 《Distance in Memory》reveals a revelation: memory represents not only the past, but the present and the future, memory is life’s introspection. |
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