"I believe that taste, smell, color, etc. exist in consciousness. Therefore, if there is no living being, these qualities also cease to exist." - Galileo
Artists have played the role of observers and recorders in the history of human culture. As many diverse individuals in different times and spaces exist, there are as many different cultural events that artists record through different perspectives, ranging from sublime religious idols, aristocratic feasts, to the daily lives of ordinary people.
With the changing times, the carriers of memory seem to have become more and more convenient. The way people reminisce about things and individuals has evolved from carved stone statues, painted pictures, and family photo albums to digital photos on mobile phones. The means of recording and reviewing have become more detailed and realistic, while the emotional triggers seem to remain among the most vague and unclear memories.
Artist Chang Kai-Chun's series of works, "Des lumières lointaines se répètent sur l'esprit (distant lights replay in the mind)," visually presents the dazzling corners of light that resemble prism effects produced by light passing through glass. However, the emotions, ideas, and even the implications of the series name that Chang Kai-Chun has summarized and integrated into his "concrete" visual interpretation are actually interpreting the "abstract" emotions and psychological memories. Just like his 2020 new series, "Yeux fermés pour voir (see with eyes closed)," which draws visual material from the residual light that briefly seeps out after an LCD screen is turned off, Chang Kai-Chun wants to present to the viewers more of the life experiences that everyone shares but are not the same, as well as subjective memories.
Artist Chang Chun-Yi's video work "FAIRY'S LAKE" revolves around the theme of "time" and was shot next to the "Fairy Lake" in the Fengdan Bailu Forest. The camera observes a little girl playing hide-and-seek, sometimes spinning around the big tree and sometimes counting while lying on the tree. The little girl running in the forest has already climbed up to the tree, but the little girl on the lake surface has just run over, or the posture of the little girl lying on the tree has already stopped, but the leaves around her and the ripples on the lake surface continue to sway with time. The time on the "reality/ground" seems to be out of sync with the time on the "illusory/lake surface." Chang Chun-Yi constructs a still time and a flowing time through the fixed-point camera angle, contemplating the multiple dimensions of time.
The exhibition is titled "A Pale View of Hills," which is the name of the novel by Nobel laureate Ishiguro Kazuo published in 1982. The protagonist, "Yukiko," immigrated from Japan to England after World War II, and the story revolves around the "present" and the "past" in her memories. In the eyes of her daughter Nikki, the "reality" seems to conflict constantly with the "reality" in her mother Yukiko's memory, and readers cannot easily judge what the author intends to present as true or unreal. The intertwined events are presented to readers, but how to interpret them depends on personal preferences and current emotions. Just like this exhibition themed on "time and memory," the artists depict their own memories as well as those of others through their own perspectives, using different materials from old and new media.