Time and Timelessness is an artistic project by renowned artist Lee Ming-sheng. Consisting of numerous photographs portraying 106 contemporary Taiwanese artists “at work,” the project is the culmination of four years of dedicated and meticulous artistic documentation. Utilizing photography and microfilm technologies, the artists’ acts and actions are captured on photographic film and subsequently converted into microfilm. By projecting the artists’ daily acts and actions onto the screen through the medium of light, the project evokes a sense of time inherent in the artistic process: each microfilm transcends its status as a mere snapshot in time, becoming a microcosm of an artistic era. Each microfilm not only captures the material and mechanical considerations of the artistic process, but also conveys the aesthetic zeitgeist of the time: its philosophy, vision, style, and spirit. In a sense, Lee’s exhibition reconfigures, re-contextualizes, and represents a history of Taiwanese art that locates and localizes itself in human beings – in us.
Despite being circumscribed by the physical limitations of one’s vision, like a pupil encircled by the iris of one’s eye, the artist’s gaze nevertheless projects a transcendent vision of the artistic environment of the times. This perspective, interweaving the phenomena of light and time, highlights the fluidity of art: of art in the act, of creation in action. The art is both happening in the now as well as advancing along the horizon of time. This scrutiny of the visual and the temporal points to the “present” present in the notion of “representation”: to the presence of life intertwined with the motion of time. It affirms the meaningful reality of the present, thereby rejecting the nihilistic dismissal of the present as superficial transience.
Time and Timelessness will be the first of an “artistic relay” of solo exhibitions held at Wistaria in 2020. It will be followed by Lee Min-Sheng’s 70th anniversary exhibition: Mountains of Maternity, which in turn will precede a series of two-week solo exhibitions by artists portrayed in Time and Timelessness. The works, situated in Wistaria’s exhibition space and tea rooms, invite viewers to engage in visual dialogue with the artists. What kind of vision will the encounter of the gazes project? What new projects will the interaction inspire?
What will this project, one bounded by physical and temporal boundaries of the Lee’s human existence, and yet capturing his contemporaries’ artistic zeitgeist, bring to light at Wistaria?
Time and Timelessness is an artistic project by renowned artist Lee Ming-sheng. Consisting of numerous photographs portraying 106 contemporary Taiwanese artists “at work,” the project is the culmination of four years of dedicated and meticulous artistic documentation. Utilizing photography and microfilm technologies, the artists’ acts and actions are captured on photographic film and subsequently converted into microfilm. By projecting the artists’ daily acts and actions onto the screen through the medium of light, the project evokes a sense of time inherent in the artistic process: each microfilm transcends its status as a mere snapshot in time, becoming a microcosm of an artistic era. Each microfilm not only captures the material and mechanical considerations of the artistic process, but also conveys the aesthetic zeitgeist of the time: its philosophy, vision, style, and spirit. In a sense, Lee’s exhibition reconfigures, re-contextualizes, and represents a history of Taiwanese art that locates and localizes itself in human beings – in us.
Despite being circumscribed by the physical limitations of one’s vision, like a pupil encircled by the iris of one’s eye, the artist’s gaze nevertheless projects a transcendent vision of the artistic environment of the times. This perspective, interweaving the phenomena of light and time, highlights the fluidity of art: of art in the act, of creation in action. The art is both happening in the now as well as advancing along the horizon of time. This scrutiny of the visual and the temporal points to the “present” present in the notion of “representation”: to the presence of life intertwined with the motion of time. It affirms the meaningful reality of the present, thereby rejecting the nihilistic dismissal of the present as superficial transience.
Time and Timelessness will be the first of an “artistic relay” of solo exhibitions held at Wistaria in 2020. It will be followed by Lee Min-Sheng’s 70th anniversary exhibition: Mountains of Maternity, which in turn will precede a series of two-week solo exhibitions by artists portrayed in Time and Timelessness. The works, situated in Wistaria’s exhibition space and tea rooms, invite viewers to engage in visual dialogue with the artists. What kind of vision will the encounter of the gazes project? What new projects will the interaction inspire?
What will this project, one bounded by physical and temporal boundaries of the Lee’s human existence, and yet capturing his contemporaries’ artistic zeitgeist, bring to light at Wistaria?
