2010 - Behind the Visible

In confrontation with many contemporary art works, viewers usually have an unnamable sense of loss and diluteness, as if between the art work and the viewer, there is an invisible wall which prevents the latter from entering. At this time, the guide book often becomes the key into the specific art world, offering the viewer “the correct answer to the work’s implication.” But the work’s subjectivity may thus vanish after language and articulation. “Just Looking” then becomes an abstruse, yet superficial and ambivalent method of reading. 
 
From the exhibition of Behind the Visible, these two artists try to tell the viewers: “Our works are not merely what you see.” The anxiety of such articulation has almost become a shared experience of all contemporary creators, for fear of “nothing can be said” about their works. Therefore, assuming that as long as an art work is “some how related” to certain contemporary philosophy with a layout of a priori or meta-language, then the work will reveal in itself the more academic or theoretical foundation. But the interesting thing is that in these two artists’ works, we do not quite see such anxiety or the blurriness of articulation. Perhaps the issue they want to raise through the title of Behind the Visible is that no matter which period or which kind of art, the work still illuminates the intuition of “it shows itself only when it remains undisclosed and unexplained.” The work does not require language to complete itself, nor the art book to offer a correct answer to correspond with. Language and articulation are merely just an easy way. Hence, if the viewer wishes to have a glimpse behind the visible, he still has to begin from the direct confrontation of the visibility of the work itself.