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| Red Column & Kiss you, Honey |
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text by Hung Su-Chen
Installation: Red Column
Place: Aomori Contemporary Art Centre, Japan
Time: July 25 ~ August 23, 2009
Materials: 2809 sewing needles, 674,160 meters of red sewing thread, water pond
I always love to do works that reflect their environment.
In the middle of the gallery floor lays a round water pond 16.4-ft in diameter. Poised 1-ft above the middle of the water surface is a tall red column 31.5” wide x 31.5” deep x 180” high suspended from the ceiling. Crimson strands, precisely hung in a square grid 53 rows x 53 rows, make up the 2,809-strand column of red sewing thread. The ends of the strands of thread are weighted with 3.5” long needles pointing towards the water surface, each needle looped with 40 red sewing threads.
The soft, tall, red column echoes the height of the green trees, which surround the Aomori Contemporary Art Centre. The placid surface of the round water pond not only reflects the red column and the 2809 needles, but also mirrors the cascading water and the architecture designed by Tadao Ando.
Video Installation: Kiss you, Honey
Six monitors are lined up horizontally along the wall, one next to the other. Each monitor plays back the progression in real time of each hour that some San Franciscan ants took to consume a luscious red mouth-shaped splotch of honey-sweet syrup. The four-and-a-half hour-long process is shown in fast motion in 12 short minutes at the sixth monitor.
We all remember spending time as children watching ants diligently moving food back to their own anthills, but few of us had the patience to watch intently for four-and-half hours to see how ants could suck up a 1-inch square of honey. That is how long it took the ants to lick these lips as clean as a whistle.
The irony of the title “Kiss you, Honey” is that kissing their sweetheart’s lips, the ants also consume the one they love.
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