Chen Chi-Hsiang – "Just Like This" Solo Exhibition

Text and images by Chen Chi-Hsiang. Dates: March 3 to April 4. Venue: Taipei Shang Gallery. Chen Chi-Hsiang (born 1956) is a mid-career artist, art critic, and contemporary art historian based in Paris, France, active in both Europe and Taiwan. He has quietly cultivated the backyard of his artistic creation without forgetting his roots. Over thirty years, he has held more than forty solo and group exhibitions domestically and internationally, with rich experience in writing and curating. His creative core has always revolved around the 'mirror image' effect of 'realm' and 'image,' metaphorically depicting the illusion of life's reality and emptiness, like the reflection of "flowers in a mirror, moon in water; floating life is like a dream," exploring the impermanence of existence and the illusory changes of worldly affairs, pioneering a unique aesthetic style of analogical twin mirror diptychs. Language between the lines creates scenes and landscapes, sentences shape spatial structures, with yin-yang cadences evoking an ethereal feeling like reciting poetry, creating more possibilities. "Just Like This" is a phrase full of positive energy; its rhythm, rhyme, and poetry express a powerful artistic conception. Bowing one's head to say "yes" means calmly accepting it, connecting with oneself. "Yes" implies definite meaning and essence, accepting everything as it is, leading people into a deeper level, revealing the inner deep realm (Note 1). The "Thusness" discussed in the Lotus Sutra is indistinguishable from true reality; thusness and constancy are like "the state that was originally so."

Artistic creation grows through the trials of time. Images arise from the mind; realms shift with the heart. Everything is created by the mind. In the present moment of following what "is," one deeply experiences and perceives the beauty of existence. "Painting" serves as the alchemy of one's own existence. The Crystalline 'Mirror Image' series refines one's will within paintings formed of multiple fragmented crystals, testing the creator's endurance and physical strength. Painting requires carefulness, concentration, patience, and single-mindedness, transforming into a solitary gull soaring through the space-time of creation. Adapting to the rhythm of life, one can paint every day when inspired, slowly holding the brush, traveling alone through thousands of mountains and rivers, practicing walking meditation in the field of painting with each stroke, neither hurried nor slow. Shuttling through the illusion of reality and emptiness in space-time, embracing oneself into a meditative state of creation, engaging in quiet dialogue with space-time, time thus becomes the alchemy of existence, opening the way to timelessness.

The 'Mirror Image' effect is the core of my creation of 'realm' and 'image' over the past twenty years, intending to explore the 'non-image' in Buddhist scriptures. As Buddhism says, all things are empty forms because "visible objects are actually non-objects." The Crystalline 'Mirror Image' series was titled Qi Xiang – Non-Image Series starting in 2013, and split into the Non-Image Series starting in 2015. Truth and non-image occasionally relate to existence; the illusion of reality and emptiness is the worldly reality. "All appearances are illusory," all appearances are empty in their essence, having no self-nature. Without self-nature, appearance is non-appearance (Note 2), revealing the Buddhist teaching of "seeing the nature of the mind": "If you see all appearances as non-appearance, you see the Tathagata."

The 'Non-Image' series continues to expand various possibilities of mirrors, immersing in the illusory mirror reflections of people, events, and objects in today's world, attempting to explore the mysteries of existence through the mirror surface. Under optimistic and progressive forms, rhythms, colors, and light, it argues the era of rapid and drastic changes in modern society, and the perceptual awareness of life's impermanence and the feeling of color. Deeply realizing the Avatamsaka Sutra: "True appearance and non-appearance have no difference; ultimately, there is no appearance." 'Just Like This' embodies "All conditioned phenomena are like dreams, illusions, bubbles, shadows, like dew or lightning; thus should one view them." 'Just Like This' attempts to depict the face-changing digital age, delving into the aesthetic exploration of personal unique analogical twin mirror diptychs.

"Just Like This" exhibits my new works from the past five years, deepening creative connotations and skills, exploring the possibilities of painting, continuing to capture the imagery and mental images flowing on the mirror surface, dreamlike and illusory dramatic scenes reflecting the current illusory situations. "Non-Image Series 13-14 – Meeting but Not Encountering" (2015) shows the situation of people meeting but not encountering in today's virtual reality. "Non-Image Series 15-16 – Itch of the Century" (2016-17) presents abstract spiritual imagery; delicate and complex forms are an illusion and feeling. Repetitive simple geometries create a vibrating energy, forming visual dynamics. Through the integration of color, between appearance and non-appearance, it is full of visual rhythm and imaginative space. "Non-Image Series 23-24 – Stillness in Motion" (2019) features abstraction in imagery, depending on the viewer's perspective. The contrasting color combination of red and green presents a diagonal composition structure. The dynamic red parabola seems to slide down continuously, reflecting humanity's inverted dreams.

Diverse experimental explorations of form and color possibilities open creative horizons. Capturing imagery or mental images according to circumstances, transforming situations into artistic conceptions, exploring the unknown or unknowable world: "Non-Image Series 17-18 – In an Instant" (2016) is a vibrant new attempt, combining and constructing local fragments of form, color, rhythm, and light in a deconstructive manner, mixing expressive and visual elements, presenting an aggressive abstraction, expressing an optimistic feeling.

Challenging my creative limits, I gathered courage to paint half-length portraits and group portraits. The tempering is not only of my mind but also of endurance, physical strength, and eye power, intending to create new contemporary portraits. "Non-Image Series 19-20 – Born in Death" (2016-17) is a mirror image study, an experimental attempt at portrait figures formed of multiple fragmented crystals. A boy with bright eyes wears a beige top and black T-shirt with a gray skull image, referring to contemporary human vanity and arrogance, and the allegory of fearing death and clinging to life. A pair of slender hands appears in the left or lower right corner, secretly taking photos with a mobile phone, embodying the current situation. 'Snap' is indeed the itch of contemporary people.

Starting in 2018, I challenged complex group portraits. "Non-Image Series 21 – Look Here" (2018) depicts a dramatic scene of three women and one man taking photos surrounded by mobile phones. Four or five hands interweave in exaggerated formal poses. Blue, red, green, and purple create spatial structures and form-color rhythms. Amidst the green jungle under the mobile phone, an arrogant and playful chocolate rabbit appears, metaphorizing the current human situation of loving life and dreaming of death. "Non-Image Series 22 – Action!" (2018-19), whether filming or sneaking shots has become a contemporary addiction, a feeling, especially sneaking shots which bring pleasure. A dramatic scene of two men and one woman filming: a man in blue is filming his smiling girlfriend, while a middle-aged man wearing a hat next to him is also sneaking photos of this scene. Unexpectedly, an Apple phone appears behind, also sneaking photos of this dramatic moment. On the middle-aged man's hat appears a mysterious mask-like mirror image, is it the surveillance "Heavenly Eye" above people's heads? Filming, sneaking shots, or shining lights back and forth all manifest the current digitalized social situation of "surveillance and governance."

Image is feeling; color becomes argumentation. Delicate and complex forms, through repetitive simple geometries, create a vibrating energy, continuous temporality, further extending the spatial field, forming visual dynamics. Through the integration of color, the realm of light and shadow manifests. Static images sometimes contain the illusion of space-time transformation; stillness reveals dynamic development. Between sensibility and expression, time and space, allegory and metaphor, construction and deconstruction, rhythm and structure, motion within stillness, change within constancy, diverse perspectives and imaginative spaces are generated, all attempting to explore the mysteries of existence from mirror images.

Three portrait paintings elucidate the social situation in the digital age and humanity's confusion about where to go. Today's world changes so rapidly. Everyone has a device, creating the current "phubber" (head-down tribe), sliding phones and checking in everywhere, indulging in tablets unable to extricate themselves. Space-time is hijacked by tools, eyes cannot keep up, confined all day on small screens, addicted to the point of poisoning. Convenient for the digital age, the mobile phone has become the core of life. With one device in hand, everything seems smooth and endless; the whole world is in this layout. Thus, questions get answers. Contemporary human life lightly hands everything over to Google search websites, no longer needing to think. The tree of eternal life withers into a flat plane, forgetting the colorful feelings of life itself. In this era of knowledge and information explosion, knowledge is surprisingly the scarcest. Controlled by information media without knowing it, the arrival of the idiot era: without judgment, how can there be criticism? Living in the ethereal world of the cloud, current regimes or authoritarian governments also rely on digital technology as a tool for "surveillance and governance" of society and restricting people's lives. Great progress leads people to the edge of disaster, touching the nerves of current life, reflecting the labor pains and tremors of the era.

" Butterfly Effect Series" (2020): The "Butterfly Effect Series" is this year's experimental exploration work. Through the butterfly effect, it elucidates the situation where pulling one hair moves the whole body. From seemingly insignificant behaviors and attitudes, chain reactions and cumulative effects can arise, embodying the dramatic effects of mutual transformation between reality and emptiness, illusion and perception, change and constancy, and virtual and real worlds in existence. Questioning the authenticity of existence?

" Butterfly Effect Series - Illusion of Life" (2020): Returning to the core of 'Mirror Image' creation. 'Mirror Image' started early in 2000 at the solo exhibition "Miles' Shared Memory: Intuition and Imagination" at Zhuiwei Studio. Fifteen years later, it appeared again during an exhibition at Dongmen Gallery in Tainan. This work continues to expand the spatial installation of the vertical mirror surface "Did You See?" (2015). This new work consists of five circular vertical mirrors, directly placed on a white wall. Several dreamlike and brilliant colorful butterflies rest on the mirror surfaces (giving temperature and saturation to the cold mirrors), a Buddha statue sits on the back of the mirror (symbolizing unchanging essence), and two decorative patterns. This work is interactive, allowing viewers to rotate angles to explore its diverse and varied visual effects. With rotation and viewing angles, space and light dance and reflect multi-faceted scenes and situations. In the illusory circumstances of virtual reality, it embodies "All conditioned phenomena are like dreams, illusions, bubbles, shadows, like dew or lightning; thus should one view them."

These five circular vertical mirrors can also be directly placed in any scene space. Depending on the field, they arrange and combine with mirrors, facing and reflecting environmental scenery from the viewer's angle, like a kaleidoscope with infinite illusory transformations of field space-time scenery. Thus, when the mirrors disappear and the butterflies vanish, suddenly, viewers cannot extricate themselves, falling into the dreamlike and illusory abyss of space-time, metaphorizing the confusion and falsity of life.

Three object-sculpture works, through the appropriation and transformation of ready-mades (two small iron sculptures are works by Yang Chiu-Hsiang), explore creative possibilities through large actions reduced to small gestures, continuing to deepen the consciousness of existence, and also reflecting my current perception and enlightenment of life.

" Butterfly Effect Series - The Way of Life": A book of human grand history, topped with a monkey skull, upon which stands a short pink candle, displayed on a small pedestal. Through the symbolism of the skull representing death and the candle, it elucidates the way of life. The history book points out human falsity. The way of life is not just the process of birth, aging, sickness, and death; existence has its own meaning and value. There is a time for birth, a time for death. Under the illusion and dream of life, glory and wealth are like floating clouds; fame and profit are equally illusory. Avatamsaka Sutra: "True appearance and non-appearance have no difference; ultimately, there is no appearance." 1 Corinthians: "The finite must return to nothing; only love never ceases." We all understand that life has both birth and death, yet we fear death and cling to life, ultimately unable to live forever. Grand history is even more illusory; grand history is like slot machines, piles of mass graves. Civilization stands on mass graves, becoming the basis for survival of the fittest or cunning acquisition. The way of life intends to thoroughly understand human essence and the reality of life.

" Butterfly Effect Series - Desire of Life": A humorous crown of candy transparent plastic covers a phallic small iron sculpture standing proudly. Colorful thin strings are tied around it, with a moth (or colorful butterfly) resting on top, presenting a confusing poetic situation, constructing an extraordinary surreal object. Transforming magical yang power into warm tenderness, using the moth (or butterfly) to tame authority and human greed, because this sensual phallus symbolizes sex, energy, power, desire, patriarchy, and imperialism. Through this dramatic behavior and attitude, it attempts to deconstruct myths and authority. The fire of desire burns life. Positive sexuality becomes the driving force passed down by humanity and the endless creativity of the world. Conversely, the raging fire of desire spreads like a prairie fire; greed, violence, aggression, war, destruction, like the situation of moths flying into fire, alas.

" Butterfly Effect Series - Dream of Life": An old, slender hand sculpture (oil clay) full of a sense of time, resembling the soft, slender fingers of a pianist. Five fingers lie listless in a row like musical rhythm. On two fingers rests a colorful butterfly, symbolizing youth whose life is plagued by long-term illness. Next to it falls a clump of purple-blue hair wrapping a small feather, along with a pink candle symbolizing life. Life is suddenly a sigh, a reflection of the dream of human existence. Inside and outside dreams, caught between body and soul, reality and fantasy, appearance and non-appearance, floating and transforming. Floating life is like a dream; beauty is always accompanied by hope. Nietzsche said: "Never abandon the hero in your soul who is proud and arrogant."

Note 1: Awakening Now, by Eckhart Tolle, translated by Liu Yong-Yi, p111, Acorn Culture, published July 2009. Note 2: From Master Jing Kong's lecture.