The Impression of Similarity
Text by Chang Ching-wen

The white-hot heat of the sun scalds the pavement.
Summertime, people are moving down the street wearing flip-flops. Some girls are squinting their eyes as they walk down the side of a light grey road that leads to the beach. An occasional motorcycle whizzes by. A faint smell of sweat mixed with SPF 50+ sun block permeates a thin tank top and wafts through the air.

A hot wind is blowing.

There are surfers on the beach. They shout over the surf as they see a large wave in the distance. Lying on their surfboards, they hasten forward to catch the wave. The surfers stand when they rise to the crest, and sensing the wave’s speed and direction with their bodies, maintain perfect balance allowing the strong current to carry them ashore.

Before my eyes there is water, water and more water. The sky is blue-grey and there are heavy clouds in the distance.

Everything seen is beautiful and precious. The sky, the sea and the earth all seem flat concealing irregular and varying details. Before they were named or even noticed by people, they were still this glorious. Pausing at the so-called horizon line between the sky and sea, one imagines the line is forever changing. After all it’s not line, just an optical illusion, like a real hallucination.

The sand that makes up the beach oozes with water, it is wet and soft yet stings my feet. Walking a few steps into the ocean, standing at the point where the waves break, I watch each wave, no two ever the same, surge forward and the white foam momentarily drift up and slowly recede. The back and forth motion can make one dizzy. My feet slowly slide into the sand as the waves beat the shore. The transparent water carries invisible grains of sand that graze my instep as the sound of the rumbling surf fills my ears.

The sand under my feet is perhaps a hundred different colors, their minute difference blending together. Looking at it in its entirety, it is one piece of harmonious light brown, with an occasional piece or two of dark green seaweed that has been washed ashore and mixed in.

The surfers have moved far away pursuing waves. Their bodies and surfboards have become little black dots stuck on a background of water and sky. They look like puppets made from scraps of paper or a bunch of firecrackers after they’ve exploded. Looking down I can see some shadows not yet carried away by sea spray projected onto the sand. The small particles of sand surrounding the footprints caved in and filled the hollow.

The shadows on the sand have changed shape, and similarly there are some indefinite changes in the form of the waves.

Wu Tung-long in his exhibition at ITPark continues in the same vein of geometric abstraction as he has in his work from 2005. We can read each subtle pattern, color variation, or trace of symbolism formed by lines in these works individually, and also we can regard the work together as a comprehensive show.

This kind of concept has steadily developed from the earlier series Symbol and Clarity; from the indistinct mapping among corresponding pairs of symbols to relatively unadulterated compressed forms created by the supple lines, or the outlines similar to everyday objects (actually the intention is to not resemble any specific image). In this series of work, he creates various relationships that are like responses that don’t correspond to any questions with form and color on the picture plane.

Additions to the new works of 2007 include a suggestion of a greater volume in his line quality which further supports the intensity of his forms. These additions make our attempts at simpler answers easier, however they only draw our vision and consciousness to definite errors in judgment. In order to cast off our habit of referencing objects, we can only see Mr. Wu's work as an extremely small or extremely large picture frame, and investigate the various basic pleasures of painting within the defined picture. Only then can we enjoy the ambiguous link between language and meaning.

They are always like something, but at the same time not so like anything.