Tell Me a Story | Solo Exhibition

存在於生命與創造裡交互共存的二元力量，彼此拉鋸與交融的張力地帶是我一貫的焦點。

此次我運用繪畫與詩歌裡色彩、筆觸姿態、比喻與意象的象徵力量，探索兩極激盪地帶的新生能量。背後的蘊意，是我對金星（或維納斯）的二元屬性激發人類文明產生的雙重象徵符號之重訪與再塑──陰性、豐饒、愛與戰爭、死亡與再生。

結合視覺與文字兩種異質的創作語言與媒介，形成多重的拉鋸表現機制，目的在賦予觀感經驗多層次的碰撞，以體現矛盾生命力的複雜面貌。例如：繪畫中色彩與素描間的衝突與交融；有機的視覺形態因應視角改變而重組的潛能，使視覺敘事恆處於蛻變歷程；藉視覺意象（觀）與詩意想像（想）交織擴充寓意能量；又或藉視覺作品內涵外擴的張力與作品文字標題間的對峙，反思重塑神話象徵。

最終，作品間的積極對話擴充至展場整體，形成寓意發酵的空間──以容納觀者跌宕起伏的繁複經驗，在不斷的匯聚與轉化中形成各自的意義。

不藉線性的鋪陳，我欲創造自己的神話──一個關於希望、無價的永恆、愛與光的神話；一份人類亙古的追求，不僅見於但丁《神曲》，亦如此次展題出處的詩作所共鳴。

神話，才正要開始。

“I wanted to paint light,
but all I’ve drawn out is darkness.”
– Emily Wang, Excavation (2021)

To Emily Wang, the creative process is a constant negotiation between intuition and reason. It is a transformative process — engaging a visual energy and qualities of emotional tension through the dynamics of visual syntax, which in turn creates feeling and narrative. It is the unification of both the cognitive and sensate that makes the experience of visual discovery meaningful to her.

The quality of her work is therefore multilayered. On the one hand, this stems from her dual discipline in fine arts and philosophy; on the other, it has to do with her in-depth practice in multiple visual mediums including photography, drawing, and painting. The direction of her practice is also shaped by her upbringing and life experience as an outlander, a role she involuntarily inherited but later has become the perspective she adopts. Her identity as a “neither-nor” enables her compassionate understanding and insight into the underlying ideologies or assumptions of the various cultural and socio-political groups she encounters. This motivates her to go beyond the apparent dichotomy and strives for timeless value. With a keen eye and poetic empathy, Wang infuses her work with vitality by leveraging seemingly oxymoronic elements.

Wang defines herself as a colorist. The dynamic relations between color and drawing underpin the ethos of her oeuvre. Through the vibrant dialogue composed of colors and gestural forms, and through her approach of all-over painting, Wang nurtures an intricate spatial tension across her canvas. The energy of each work is brought about by a constantly shifting correlation between the myriad of brushstrokes. As one’s gaze travels across the canvas, and with any changes in perspective and focal point, one experiences a simultaneous collision and coalescence of opposing energies. Through prolonged engagement in seeing, the multiplicity of narrative potentials unfolds gradually.

In her 2019 solo exhibition A Sense of Pleasure, Wang selected a series of abstract works from her decade-long endeavor of working from direct observation, including drawings and paintings, as well as photographic polyptychs of equally abstract quality. Her process began with constructing large-scale tabletop installation resembling an interior landscape that allows her an immersive experience throughout her creative process — from constructing it to visually engaging it, and painting from it. Swimming in the ocean of sensory experiences, her body becomes a highly perceptive vehicle that simultaneously takes on multiple roles as a beholder, a mediator, and the creator throughout the creative process. The triangular relationship was transformed on the canvas via brushstrokes — with each stroke setting in motion new sets of visual correlations and meaning.

In her latest solo exhibition Tell Me a Story at TKG⁺ Projects, the energetic exchange between ambivalent forces once again takes center stage. In addition to painting, she also integrates poetry in her exploration of duality. Since the inception of the theme related to this exhibition, Wang began to experience a strong sense of poetic sound along with the ebb and flow of her inner experiences during her creative process. Incubated for years, the songs without words she experienced began to materialize in 2020 when she relocated to a small coastal town in eastern Taiwan. The changeable sea is the grand theatre of nature’s dual force which resonates with the artist’s theme of exploration. Poetry came to her during her daily walk to the Pacific. Imageries and symbols in her poems infuse personal reflections and dream revelations of Venusian dual symbolisms, connecting personal perspective with the general theme of her exploration of duality. Similarly, through the suggestive power of color relations, she combines observation and imagination in her painting process, and infuses visual discoveries made during her process with visions inspired by her dreams.

By colliding and coalescing two different mediums of expression, the exhibition space is transformed into an allegorical space to invoke a sense of mythical experience.

The drawing and the poem combination in the opening section engages the theme directly — the artist’s yearning for Arcadia or eternity — through its absence. By pairing an unfinished drawing with a poem that only hints at the possibility of the archetypal Venusian being, the artist answers the title of her exhibition that the quest for a promised land has no end and is always unfolding. 

The two large-scale double-sided paintings in the main exhibition area offers a new aspect of the tension between color and drawing. Through serendipity, Wang adopts a new textile material as her canvas. Unexpectedly, some heavy paint strokes penetrated the surface and created a drawing imbued with the organic quality resembling cave-painting that is distinct from the visual quality and meaning of the painting in the front. Each backside drawing is then finished on-site to complete its dialogue with the painting in the front. The permeability and penetration of color provides a new perspective on Wang’s oeuvre.

 

An artist changes the world not by physical force, but through the nurturing quality of her work. When reality becomes stranger than fiction, Wang seeks harmony and union of oppositions on a higher level. Just as the point of departure of the artist’s exploration of duality began with her yearning for Arcadia, it was the dark imageries of Dante’s Inferno and the corruption of humanity that symbolize that Wang struggled to reconcile with — including her own shadows — throughout her creative process. Out of this dark process, Wang gave birth to artwork filled with vitality; each symbolizes her spiritual rebirth. This is the best gift an artist can give to this world, and what the artist can contribute to the spiritual growth of the collective in the time of mania.

「我欲畫光，
而我汲取盡是黑暗。」
—王慶蘋，《出土》2021

創作之於王慶蘋，是一段直覺與邏輯的、感性與理性的，美感與哲學間不斷的拉鋸、對話，最終重生為獨立作品的歷程。這樣多重的交互蛻變關係，部分來自於她藝術及哲學的雙重教育背景，以及攝影和繪畫跨媒材的創作經驗。另一部分來自於她個人成長經驗。作為一個被排除者，一個異人身份；而後有意識地審視特定文化、團體、族群的意識形態的取向。這一非歸屬感造就她期許自己能超越非此即彼的觀點，以敏銳的觀察力及感受力，深入結合多樣甚而對立的元素，創造藝術語彙新的生命力。

王慶蘋定義自己為色彩藝術家。色彩與素描結構在畫作裡彼此間的抗衡與相生對作品內涵與能量的激發，一直是她作品的特質。藉由形與色的動態對話，她的畫孕育一種複雜的空間張力——每個焦點或視角的轉移持續改變畫中筆觸的相互關係，交織出多層次、開展不同敘事的可能性。隨著觀者時間的投入及目光的推移，作品內蘊含的深邃意涵，漸次綻放明朗。

2019年的王慶蘋個展「感受的詩學」，由建構巨大而複雜的靜物裝置開始，結合不同質感的布料與物件，製造多變的空間感以及視覺層次，以身體這個流動的有機體，承載如海洋般豐碩的感受力，同時擔任接收者、協調者、以及創造者的角色。讓觀看與看見本身保有的某種真空自在，與思緒的分析結構，能以一種不互相干擾，卻又互相帶領的方式，將所觀照的世界，透過每一筆顏料落在畫布上的過程，持續地重新認識彼此，成為創作者經驗與思緒對話的場域，最終融合為一新的整體感受語彙－作品本身。

此次在TKG+ Projects的全新個展《 Tell Me a Story —在這瘋狂的年代 》，多元衝突及矛盾的關係，依然扮演藝術家創作的關鍵角色，而作品內涵的複雜層次更加多重。除了視覺語彙的淬煉，藝術家更將其在準備個展、回顧整體創作歷程時所感受到呼之欲出的內在聲響，昇華為詩歌，同時梳理與凝聚整個創作歷程裡各個感官片段。尤其在2020年底搬到台灣東部小鎮後，詩意有如潮水浸潤她身上的每一個細胞，乃至片段的聲響終究浮出意識表面，迸發為文字語句。在其前往海邊的路上，與生命創作歷程相呼應的詩句滿溢而出。結合繪畫裡的彩料語言，她譜出感官的、寓言式的內在經驗。這如同她繪畫裡運用色彩關係，結合直接觀看與觀察、接受經驗與夢的引發等內外經歷後一再地將之轉化，目的在創造一種存在的新樣貌。交織著繪畫的視覺及詩性的語言，透過兩種異質媒材的相遇與碰撞，同時將展覽空間轉換為寓意發酵的空間。未完成的素描與詩篇並呈的入口處，更直指藝術家的展覽命題——對永恆世外桃源的渴望，如同素描未完成的缺憾；烏托邦的失落雖是事實，卻也意味著應許之地永遠可企及的可能性。

此外，展場上的兩幅大型雙面畫作 No. 51, Magnitude 11 (Take 1) – Birth of Venus 及 No. 54, Magnitude 11 (Take 2) – Forbidden Lili，揭示了王慶蘋持續探索繪畫與素描可能性的強烈意圖。使用不同於以往的無酸紡織材料作為畫布，繪畫正面部分深沉的筆觸穿透了畫布，在背面自成為如洞穴壁畫般素樸的質感及肌理，卻結構完整的素描作品。輔以藝術家觀察展場狀態，轉譯到畫面的現地創作，畫作正反之間的對話，及色彩在穿透之間的蛻變，對於作品的動態張力及對話提供了嶄新的視角。

藝術家的革命，來自於作品潛移默化改變人心的力量。當世界無法繼續粉飾太平，人性的醜陋面完全攤開，王慶蘋試著協調與世界之間具體存在的相關位置，堅持直視直覺與理性，藉創作創造重生的精神性。即便作畫時滿腔悲哀，腦中持續迴盪著神曲的地獄詩篇；亦因這一矛盾，理想國的夢得以持續推進。作品，作為這重生的結晶，便是一個藝術家能給這世界最好的禮物。