Curators：Jin Qiuyu, Hsu Chun Yi
The exhibition NOT IN THIS IMAGE is curated jointly by Hsu Chun Yi (from Taiwan) and Jin Qiuyu (from Japan).
Jin Qiuyu, Curator
The contemporary image, be that on the end of production or reception, attaches too much emphasis on content loading and reading. As a result, people spare no effort to load more mediums on one single image. Either the use of technology or the excessive reliance on exhibition space, for instance, turns out to limit the plasticity of image itself. The term “viewing” seems conditioned by production like “filmmaking” or “producing.” Although we have higher freedom of operation toward visuals nowadays, all these are in fact merely perceptual changes pre-manufactured by data computing. That is, people are losing their agency in “viewing” while the relationship between the viewer and viewee appears to be unidirectional.
Hence, while we enhance senses and messages, do we overlook the imminent yet fleeting mental image that dwells only in individual consciousness? For example, prior to the manifestation of image, it requires matters such as machines, mediums, and materials, whereas we always treat them as the very existence of image. Nevertheless, its true manifestation, i.e. the experience gained by viewers and the part rendered along with imagination and contemplation, is in reality hard to be represented. Situated on the other side of the margin, nearly invisible, it is the key to direction association between the image itself and the existence thereof, nonetheless. Yet, the encounter with the image are not to be interpreted via more discourses and knowledge, but to retard perceptions to attain a new one. Such requirement is literally a decrease of viewing’s intensity instead of an increase of more feelings granted.
The Exhibition focuses on the images “outside” of works – that cannot be seen here and now. Then, it reconnects and circulates within viewers, reversing the “invisible” into the foundation that constitutes visuals. Can we remove the content and leave only the surface of image made of matters that emit light, and allow work to co-construct an interface that engages exchanges directly with the imagination and contemplation of viewers through the Exhibition? To name a few from the participating artists, Mari Matsubara’s work, through the verification of the image’s uncertainty, arrives in front of viewers at last, whereas Akihiko Taniguchi overlaps the work with the mental dimension of viewers to reflect the intention thereupon. If a work is a “small image,” the exhibition as a whole is the “big image” comprising all the works. The Exhibition does not write more images and files, nor does it seek supports for narratives and plots. Instead, it endeavors to depict a field of view close to emptiness. These empty images are not suggesting a collective withdrawal, but collectively referring the venue not in here. It stands without while dwells deep within image. The boundary that determines the form of image is in no way pre-defined, but present in the fleeting moment where sight and image encounter.
Hsu Chun Yi, Curator
Invisible refers to something not present before the eyes. Yet, it does not necessarily indicate the loss of visibility thereof in reality. On the contrary, it is the awareness of the absence of something that we can actually see something, for confirmation of absence is indeed an actual perception. Where a viewer’s sight traverses in futile and arrives elsewhere, it is the temporary disconnection between the eyes and the brain as well as the separation of feelings and meanings. It is perhaps the most naked yet refusing condition to exhibit itself of image: seeing unceasingly, yet gaining nothing. Hence, everything seen must be experienced a second time. Beyond the light and shadow rendered by mediums and matters, there is constantly an image escaping the eyes. Its true presence is essentially not within the visible horizon, but merely in the non-present moment outside of the light, i.e. coming into being beyond, amidst, before, and after image. The relationship between eyes and the object is not the coexistence here and now, but the interplay of presence and absence.
NOT IN THIS IMAGE attempts to dive into the present of transmission, access, and consumption in the highly informationization and capitalization of visuals as well as in production thereof to propose an alternative thinking while reconnect its direct association with sensibility. Where signals, silhouettes, and meanings are blurred, can image regain its maximum potential? In the vacuum space where identification fails without reference whatsoever, can imagination and recollection be activated and form an imminent afterimage in mind?
This exhibition comprises six artists from Taiwan and Japan in search of nothingness either in space or in time embedded in image while discriminatively reflecting on the existing contemporary mediums, technologies, materials, and texts. Hsieh Yu Cheng employs the unique properties of light to deconstruct everyday mediums and expose materialistic condition that make viewing possible; Randy Yang modifies the connections seen, heard, and thought of altogether via reassembly of technical objects; Mari Matsubara touches the ambiguous moments before and after image coming into being in her work via appropriation and remaking of materials; Lyota Yagi takes readymade objects and texts as subjects to present (view) the stretched gradual change of experience; Hsu Chun Yi’s work attempts to return to cinema itself and reflects upon the issue of boundary with montage and perception; and Akihiko Taniguchi showcases the occasional displacement of spatial horizon presented via program computation in a digital virtual context.
Image shall no longer as what we see it is, and even not within what we see, whereas viewing is merely for the sake of not capable of seeing. It is to image in the absence of knowledge. Hence, the criteria for image visibility shall be image emptying itself. It shall load no message, narrative, or grammar, but the pure empty possibility. The indices in between things and meanings have been replaced by the duo relationship of “visible-invisible.” Before and after the appearance and disappearance of image, or in the intervals between frames hardly noticed, image traverses to and fro between the perceptible and imperceptible, manifesting itself, in advance or delayed, in the consciousness of viewers. Viewing serves not the point of perception to receive any existing light, but the on-site creation of a condition not in this image, waiting for the birth of a novel perception.
