“Open Containers” is artist Luo, Jr-shin’s first solo exhibition at Michael Ku Gallery. In this exhibition, Luo, Jr-shin integrates images, objects, installations, and sculptures, blending them cleverly into an open yet specific narrative. As a continuation of his artistic practice in which he explores objects and materials, Luo, Jr-shin goes beyond developing the ready-made properties by vigorously experimenting with the elements through juxtaposition, overlapping, and even collision. In so doing, he creates a unique artistic language. The exhibition includes a series of his recent works created with a myriad of combined techniques such as silicon rubber, UV printing, and digital textile printing.
Beyond the visual language, the sense of smell is an inconspicuous but pivotal element in the exhibition. The artist selected a common solid air freshener to serve as a metaphor, its cheap image and scent accurately marking experiences that we all share. Its coordinates might exist on a point of forced suspension that took place somewhere along a journey or a moment of naked privacy in a public space. Simultaneously, this invisible smell responds to the title, permeating and probing the shape of the space with its scent.
Like an open container, much of life’s anonymous details can vanish, and reappear, at any given time; half invisible and half present, with all forms of imagination existing in between. Just as when the skin of an orange is being slowly peeled away, its scent and shape vaguely divulge its inner content; like a stranger on a train next to you whose jean pocket reveals the shape of its contents — junk, wallet, keys and other effects. These half-disclosed-half-concealed clues lead into each individual’s underlying character and circumstances. This idea brought about by these clues will be dispersed, yet faintly visible, throughout this solo exhibition.
