Intruded Objects
Photography, by capturing images of objects, intends to somehow imply that people tacitly see images and objects as interchangeable things. However, should we be alert to the sense of beauty embedded in the shape of the object and the validity of the question raised behind the visualized representation of the object? During the process of interpretation, or purification, has the original potency of the object been conveyed? Has anything gone missing during the process? To evade the preset premise (that object and image of the object can be treated equally), we therefore must shift our focal point to a somewhat marginalized issue: the intrusion of photography (before and after) upon the object and new questions that will arise.
Michel Serres resorted to the notion of “quasi-objects” to elaborate the relationship between the subject and the object, proposing that the relation was neither pre-Kantian (subject under the control of object) nor post-Kantian (subject-centrism). Rather, the intermediary between the subject and object makes them possible to interpenetrate. Drawing on this notion, “intrusion upon objects” also becomes a kind of intermediary. The artists featured in this exhibition resort to “intrusion” to tackle various issues. The “intrusion” by “subjects” upon “objects” puts the objects in the central position. They are important and unimportant at the same time as they are detached from their original contexts during the shift of positions between the center and the periphery.
