Preface
Sleep often escapes tranquillity, weaving through an infinite mix of thoughts and inspirations to reach conclusions. It's a sensation that seems like a drug-induced shape, yet distinct in its ability to either slow time to a crawl or make me forget it altogether. Delving deep into the origins of these thoughts often leads me to another realm, where I seek answers, intense guilt and satisfaction for a student driven by academic passion.
"Contemporary art is the complex simplification of thought," I muttered with closed eyes, jotting it down in a night. This allows me to escape the complicated processes of deduction, presenting my thoughts more intuitively, abstractly, and simply. I believe the more an artist does at this stage, the more convenient it becomes for the audience. Perhaps I aim to provide a blank canvas adorned with simple overlapping lines, each invested with its symbolic meaning.
Symbolism
I'm unsure how my severe and paranoid thoughts formed; they've been with me for a long time. I often deny the influence of others on me. However, it's likely that early exposure to visual art, such as Pablo Picasso's "Guernica" and Gordon Bennett's "The Outsider," had a potential impact on me. Like my art teachers, who often encouraged me to add more details, I began to see it as a symbolic layer in my later art studies. This made me critical and almost compulsive about the need for good and bad things.
Void
I was born a persistent extremist, and later, I found solace in Taoism. Influenced by the "The Scripture of Purity and Stillness" of Moral Master, I examined the beliefs I've always held and attached to "balance and harmony." If the balance is the broad and tangible plane, then downward, I reckon it is the "Void." I won't consider it a philosophical reflection but rather an experiment. Because truth always fits.
Conceptualization
If layers are a concept more easily understood by people, can thoughts devoid of senses distinguish layers? This was my curiosity when conceiving Project 4. In brief, layers can be fused or, as a whole, deconstructed by individual judgment. If they are too abstract or natural as a piece, can they be properly separated again? (Or as Laozi proposed in the "Tao Te Ching," "The Tao gives birth to one, one gives birth to two." Though simple, can one perceive the one in the state of two?) This would also be an installation work, fully integrating the concept of "two layers," presented in the simplest and most straightforward manner. Under the concept of "Void," distinguishing through olfactory or tactile senses would demonstrate "balance."
Epilogue
It seems I've entered a realm of contemporaryism, yet I hope it's somewhat different. I don't want to admit to being selfish, for example, by focusing on the human part and defining it selfishly. The new thesis and research direction are decided to be MIP protocol. Yet I suspect it's an artificial rational logic system intending to apply formulas to interpret human social behaviour. Perhaps this is also a remains of my writing of severe literature back in the day.