Head Study

Artist Statement

statement The familiar, or the unfamiliar...... By keeping the form to the end, I tried to draw it kindly, to help a little more in grasping its presence. My dissatisfaction with the familiar form grew and grew, and when it appeared on the surface as it was, it felt extremely crude or even uncomfortable to look at. That was then; perhaps now it is different...... I have never simply thrown away things I have once used. Taking apart a broken printer, I found rather decent parts. A few motors and gears, metal rods, strange parts, leftover nails, leftover ballpoint pens, CDs that have already become things of the past, the legs of the children's desk, and so on....... The pieces inside, each of which had a function, are recombined and produce results in entirely new functions, or become the underdrawing for printmaking—a somewhat classical and labor-intensive image—and are reborn there. The tools used in making the work are not made out of new materials but assemblages of things that already exist. The tool, rather than letting me control everything in working, brings out unexpected images and movements that are hard to control. Focusing on this somewhat complicated, almost absurd process can be said to have begun in dissatisfaction with the form (形彩) I had tried to show in earlier work. Like the unreason of a reality where, to become strong, one is forced to dress up and disguise oneself further and further, I repeated the act of arming myself in images that felt strange to me and confining myself within them. I wanted out of that frame, and now wished, at least on the surface, to become free in a less kind, less concrete form. What the tools I am using now have in common is multiple. This is a meaning shared by the way the tool expresses and the concept of the print edition. It also carries the meaning of recycling. These tools, both familiar and unfamiliar, are born into printmaking—a method familiar to me—and into drawing, into the somewhat familiar image of a face, but even that image is unfamiliar. In the sense of an experimental image and method, I attach the word 'head study' before the subtitle of the work. For years I have been drawing, cutting, and printing the face. Rather than showing it as a still scene, it has been an attempt at a flow that wanted to shake something in the viewer. That something is feeling, and beyond, empathy. The strangeness arising from what is unfamiliar or from what comes out of the familiar may at first feel like a question when one sees my work, but then a change of feeling occurs— a kind of 'transference (轉移) of feeling' I pursue. To push that intent to its furthest, I express it through the image of the face (head). The energy flowing from the face is influenced by the energies present all around it and is conveyed back to the viewer through visual exchange. Carving a rubber plate (linoleum), cutting the plate improvisationally, putting ink on it, and pressing—these acts resemble earlier print processes, but I let go of the edition concept of printmaking and make only one (monotype). Within the larger frame of the face (head), I roll color onto plates (Layers) of various shapes and sizes and press them. Memory and history are mixed with truth and lie. The fragments that stand for memory yield different results depending on how they are arranged. Even when people share the same experience, what is remembered differs from person to person, and the part one wants to remember begins from a self-favoring or selfish ground—that I express through the work. I want to live with the attitude of recalling true memory and reflecting upon it. As I call up a memory piece by piece, those pieces are rearranged, and through one memory another memory is summoned. The memories that come up tend to be ones that hurt, or ones I did wrong, more than the ones I did well. In order to recall and reflect and live well from now on, I am working at it again today.