Into the Crevices of Imagination
When the state apparatus presides over history and exercises the power of discourse over contemporary matters via the media, memories and judgments of individuals are constrained under influences of a certain ideology. The forms of memory is a hidden motif underlying this exhibition, interlinking the works of the three artists. Chen Che Wei, Chang Wen Hsuan, and Hsu Che Yu investigate foreign matter buried in reality via different means, from investigation, deduction, to writing. They all use fiction to reproduce their inquiries in artistic forms. Fiction, however, can possibly reveal more truth.
Author Wu Ming-Yi once said in his novel, The Stolen Bicycle (2015), in the voice of the protagonist, 鈥淚 often feel that a novelist uses three pillars of truth to get the reader to believe in seven pillars of fiction and enter the castle he or she has created in language, whether it is opulent, squalid, fantastical or unreal.鈥漑1] In the book, Wu Ming-Yi creates a complicated multilayered narration to demonstrate interplay between text and reality through interactions between characters in the book and the reader. According to Wu鈥檚 concept, the imaginary/suspended space provided by art is the truth within the hybrid of reality and fiction. As society predominates most of our value systems, this imaginary and suspended space becomes an important remaining possibility for the subjectivity of each individual. With the help of the fictionality of art, how can we rediscover what is buried beneath systematic norms? The act of imagining, or doubting, is a significant function which art offers to society. The proposition of the exhibition puts forward a hypothesis: If art retains its function and responsibility in society, how does it, with its intrinsic fictionality, empower people to cast doubts on reality? When the function of art is assimilated into the structural operation of societal collectivity, is it possible for the context that art has constructed/reconstructed to identify the crevices of fantasy, and to further provoke an awareness of what lies amidst them? By clandestinely employing texts seen as taboo or heresy by society, a propelling agency to call things into question before and behind the facade is proffered.
The crevices of fantasy have always been part of our daily life. It is merely because of the operation of the state and social system that they remain inconspicuous. Titled Into the Crevices of Imagination, this exhibition suggests that artworks be a tool of identification and imagination to identify the heterogeneity concealed by the system鈥檚 operative framework, to recognize the systemic manipulation on individuals and their memory, and to further imagine a coexistence with the heterogeneous outside the system.
When the state apparatus presides over history and exercises the power of discourse over contemporary matters via the media, memories and judgments of individuals are constrained under influences of a certain ideology. The forms of memory is a hidden motif underlying this exhibition, interlinking the works of the three artists. Chen Che Wei, Chang Wen Hsuan, and Hsu Che Yu investigate foreign matter buried in reality via different means, from investigation, deduction, to writing. They all use fiction to reproduce their inquiries in artistic forms. Fiction, however, can possibly reveal more truth.
Author Wu Ming-Yi once said in his novel, The Stolen Bicycle (2015), in the voice of the protagonist, 鈥淚 often feel that a novelist uses three pillars of truth to get the reader to believe in seven pillars of fiction and enter the castle he or she has created in language, whether it is opulent, squalid, fantastical or unreal.鈥漑1] In the book, Wu Ming-Yi creates a complicated multilayered narration to demonstrate interplay between text and reality through interactions between characters in the book and the reader. According to Wu鈥檚 concept, the imaginary/suspended space provided by art is the truth within the hybrid of reality and fiction. As society predominates most of our value systems, this imaginary and suspended space becomes an important remaining possibility for the subjectivity of each individual. With the help of the fictionality of art, how can we rediscover what is buried beneath systematic norms? The act of imagining, or doubting, is a significant function which art offers to society. The proposition of the exhibition puts forward a hypothesis: If art retains its function and responsibility in society, how does it, with its intrinsic fictionality, empower people to cast doubts on reality? When the function of art is assimilated into the structural operation of societal collectivity, is it possible for the context that art has constructed/reconstructed to identify the crevices of fantasy, and to further provoke an awareness of what lies amidst them? By clandestinely employing texts seen as taboo or heresy by society, a propelling agency to call things into question before and behind the facade is proffered.
The crevices of fantasy have always been part of our daily life. It is merely because of the operation of the state and social system that they remain inconspicuous. Titled Into the Crevices of Imagination, this exhibition suggests that artworks be a tool of identification and imagination to identify the heterogeneity concealed by the system鈥檚 operative framework, to recognize the systemic manipulation on individuals and their memory, and to further imagine a coexistence with the heterogeneous outside the system.
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