randian | 燃点

The last two decades of precipitous change have provided much grist for recent exhibitions, artist talks, and essays. The pre-eminence of digital technologies in society, the unpredictable advances in biotechnology and Artificial Intelligence, and irreversible environmental degradation encapsulated under the banner of the Anthropocene all speak to a certain disquiet towards unproblematic notions of progress.

Stepping into the exhibition, what I first noticed were two Chinese characters about a person’s height, printed in red, jumping out from the white background of the gallery. These characters provide the most distinctive visual cues in Zeng Hong’s solo exhibition “Quaderni Rossi”.

(中文) 倘若今天还能探讨美学效果而不被人嗤之以鼻，我们应从何种角度去思考艺术家的创作或创造？康德很久以前就提示过我们，任何艺术都不如一场战争或一场自然灾害那样令人震撼。战争作为人类各种暴力的集中爆发，而自然灾害是超越人类尺度的狂暴力量，两者都会造成人类难以承受的肉体和精神创伤。

Desire and the visual have forever been intertwined. You cannot desire what you already have, so the object of desire is something spatially removed from oneself – a distance that can only be bridged by our sense of vision. All other senses, touch, smell, taste and even sound require a much closer proximity than sight. […]

From his 2016 solo show “Making Good Things Go Better” at Telescope Space to “Fantastic Grounds” in 2017, Jiu Jiu has been concerned with looking at counteracting forces produced by the formation of images. But the computer interface still remains in the “othered” position of being objectified, whether it is in the artist’s artistic process or the audience’s viewing experience.

Taiwanese artist Yao Jui-chung’s practice is intimately tied to human history, whether economic decay or the vicissitudes of Cross-Strait relations, yet much of his recent work avoids depicting humans altogether.

Writing from Paris in 1991 under the pseudonym “No Beard Fei,” Fei Dawei penned a letter to fellow art critic and curator “Scraggly Beard Grandpa,” the pen name of Li Xianting in Beijing. Fei’s letter was a response to Li’s concern that “if art leaves its cultural motherland, it necessarily withers.”

Why walk in areas adjacent to the museum? Why couple the acts of walking with exhibition viewing? Even if the practice of the institution is intimately connected to the local environment, this doesn’t necessarily mean that bundling the acts of walking, discussion and exhibition viewing together is a comprehensive response to this issue.