I have known the artist for years, but I still feel amazed, or rather, moved, when facing this new set of works. Let's start with the title—"The Frequency of Your Thoughts in This Chaos." This phrase does not become tiresome due to its length because each word connects the artist's work and the world into a whole: "chaos," "thoughts," and "frequency." These words point to a vague area between science and religion but also to the artist I know well. Rather than grand concepts and landscapes, the artist always searches for moments in the chaotic everyday where external and internal collide into a single thought and carefully feels the subtle frequencies of these vibrations. This title accurately captures the creative mode of the artist's camera as a second pair of eyes viewing the world, weaving a delicate web of words leading opening to her work.
Compared to words, the artist's works speak more loudly. Many of the pieces in this exhibition are not so much depicting existing things as attempting to capture an inaudible frequency and share her discoveries with the audience. Water, wind, sunlight—these basic elements of nature compose the scenes of the artist's works, but they are far more than that; as these elements exist in nature, they remain dynamic and part of the whole world; remarkably, they retain their dynamic qualities, like a lively theater growing directly from life. At the same time, these elements are not combined in their natural state but reflect the artist's personal inner feelings about the world, like the misty tea smoke on a small boat in a chaotic torrent. In this world, the most important element is light, which is the critical medium connecting all scattered details. This element has constantly drawn and uniquely touched the artist.
Finally, this exhibition also shows a young artist's continuous evolution in her creativity. From a traditional photography-centered approach, she has now shifted to making multi-media installations to create immersive experiences, moving from two-dimensional to multi-dimensional, from visual to physical, with a bolder, more dynamic grasp of time and space. The artist's work is maturing. In the past two years, she has broken out of the constraints of the lens and frame, making photography a bodily experience, reminiscent of John Dewey's assertion: "Modern art is about creating an experience." In these experiences, light is not only the most critical element of photography but also the entry point to the artist's bodily experience. The artist says, "The only light source is our subconscious and id, projected through a filter into conscious thoughts." More importantly, these works demonstrate that the light source does not exist in isolation, and different dimensions of consciousness and thoughts often overlap like layers of halos in a sun ring. The simultaneous sound of breathing and heartbeat metaphorically suggests the complexity of human beings as both physical and spiritual beings and the cycle and transience of life; but on a microscopic level, this may be why the artist is drawn to the everyday, which is also one of the reasons that initially moved me.
In an increasingly chaotic era, the "you" the artist proposes can be me, anyone else, or even herself; this is less an invitation and more a question: determining the frequency of thoughts is also determining our posture in life, defining a certain role we play in the world—an implicit question. But whether we live only in our own frequency or not, entering this exhibition may also mean entering the resonance of this frequency.
Text/Wang Zheng (Curator)
Proofreader/Yazmin Hsu