Chen Chi-Hsiang (Titien)

Images and Text - Chen Chi-Hsiang (Titien)

Date: March 12 - 30, 2024

Time: Tuesday to Saturday, 11:00-19:00

Address: 15 Rue Guenegaud 75006 Paris

An appointment with the mirror invites people to meet themselves in the mirror—who is that self, and who am I? Is what you see in the mirror truly you? Do you still exist when you step away from the mirror? T.S. Eliot: "We had the experience but missed the meaning, and approach to the meaning restores the experience." Under the concept of illusory flowers in a mirror or moons reflected in water, the mirror's wondrous encounter has become the central theme of my creative work over the past two decades, carefully examining the mirror image in an attempt to uncover the meaning of existence.

Fallen from the Altar: Digitization

The global internet weaves an all-encompassing digital network world, bringing optimistic and enterprising comprehensive possibilities to humanity, ushering in an era of open, diverse, and brilliantly colorful instant communication. With a device in every hand, life cannot escape the three Cs (computer, communication, consumer electronics). Everything, even trivial matters, can be asked of the great Google, leading to a loss of individual independent thinking ability. The small silver screen, like a kaleidoscope, acts more like a hypnotic drug, making people irresistibly glued to it, immersed in the digital world and unable to extricate themselves.

Life is a miracle, existence is full of profundity—physiological, psychological, spiritual, and metaphysical aspects. Digitization flattens humans into numbers through programming; everyone becomes a digital identity. Those without data become outsiders in administrative organs, no longer possessing a social identity. The digital hypnotic array dazzles and bewilders. From the COVID-19 pandemic, people saw and experienced how rulers or governors manipulate the flock through digital means. The virtual becomes more real than reality; simulacra replace reality. The hypnotic array programs society, and humanity enters what seems like an open but actually closed digital farm without realizing it. In this slanted, topsy-turvy world, in this lamentable era of false information and manipulation, digitization becomes a tool of rule for democratic authoritarian regimes, a means to comprehensively dominate society—widespread facial recognition, digitization, QR codes, and social credit. The optimism and hidden worries brought by the AI revolution, its beauty and sorrow. British writer George Orwell (1903-50) wrote in his posthumous work 1984: "Big Brother is watching you." Former U.S. President George W. Bush said: "They can run, but they can't hide." Alas.

Gazing - The Digital Brave New World:

Brilliant and colorful digitization brings unprecedented vision and various image possibilities to humanity, dazzling like a kaleidoscope of colors, 3D or holographic projections where virtual reality is more real than reality, etc., like a simulacrum of paradise on earth, liberating people's imagination and infinite prospects, serving as the source of inspiration for my current creative phase, discovering a brave new world in the gaze.

Under the influence and impact of digital imagery, the Mirrorless Series examines the signs and metaphors of digital images, compiling a new visual poetic vocabulary, with subjective forms and splendid colors, initiating two major series of still life and figure paintings, full of allegorical and literary aesthetic sense. Still life is a metaphor for the diverse extensions of the current digital brave new world, while figures manifest current perceptions.

Digital Context - Still Life:

A new painting vocabulary—revolving around internet imagery, facial recognition digital sign images, multicolored colored spheres referring to mental consciousness and metaphysical time-space, the metaphorical third eye, and various real and imagined objects, etc. Splendid colors and diverse forms are constructed on a brilliantly colorful geometric stage, dramatically performing human (mirror) scenes that are more real than virtual, illustrating the current existential situation of humanity.

Brave New World: The current incredibly beautiful digital hypnotic array becomes a deceptive trap for human existence, where "beauty" becomes fatal without hesitation. Fallen from the Altar: When the sacredness of life is flattened into numbers, humanity falls from the altar. Beautiful Mask: Facial recognition is like an invisible mask, both beautiful and sorrowful. Masquerade: A self-deceiving, hypocritical ball like a paradoxical Halloween. All Is Emptiness or the Call of Death: Under today's natural and man-made disasters, where is humanity headed? Under the call of death, a spotted butterfly appears, symbolizing human awakening through the butterfly effect.

Embodiment of Consciousness - Figures:

Figures are the embodiment and portrayal of the painter's own consciousness, summoning the self through figures, also manifesting the current human situation. Characters making a grand entrance are like actors; the picture is like a theater. Expressive figures are almost all three-headed and six-armed (metaphorically representing human omnipotence), with exaggerated body movement vocabulary, adorned and dressed in splendid clothing or wearing hats as they appear, each performing their unique situation. The Unexpected Knight: the circumstance of setting out on a campaign; The Self-Amused Player: the state of self-forgetfulness—these two groups emphasize body vocabulary with expressionless faces. The Clown's Glasses: exposing a world of lies amidst jubilant laughter; The Little Girl Capturing the Eye: uncovering the unknowable; The Painter's Eye: fully armed, bravely revealing the truth of existence—these three groups possess body and facial features and expressions.

Unexpected Beauty:

Existence is unimaginable, with various possibilities; life's circumstances are met by chance, not by seeking. Thus, the living source of art is open. Constructing and combining objects from different cultural systems and backgrounds has become my creative method, often marveling at that unexpected beauty, forming new or unfamiliar vocabulary and multi-meaning narratives, and emitting an extraordinary atmosphere and artistic conception. As Italo Calvino indicated: "What the eye sees is not things, but images of things that symbolize other things."

Note: Mirrorless (Miroir Phaseless) means not attaching to form or empty form (as the sutra says - all dharmas are empty in form), not discriminating the characteristics of all dharmas, the mind is like a mirror surface.

2024-01-23 Paris