"Somewhere In Between The Boundaries" Project by Ya-chu Kang & Christian Nicolay

【Statement】

Boundaries are a distinction between countries, borders of territory, and various edges in our daily life. The border can separate things including real objects and intangible concepts from tiny cells to the large universe. This exhibition, entitled “Somewhere In Between The Boundaries”, marks the forth chapter of artists Ya-chu Kang (Taiwan) and Christian Nicolay’s (Canada) collaborative project Portable Walls. The earlier chapters were exhibited in Vancouver BC Canada at Elliott Louis Gallery in 2012 and at Initial Gallery in 2014 and most recently in Jyväskylä Finland for an artist residency with Äkkigalleria in 2015. They continue to explore contemporary narratives of the polarities between life and death, public and private, natural and artificial, safety and danger, comfort and distress, men and women, West and East. Both artists’ practices are multidisciplinary who work together in a range of materials. They utilize found material of the everyday, producing works ranging from the various topographical landscapes of Nicolay's mixed media paper drawings to Kang's multi layered textile and fiber art and their reconstructions of objects into sculptural forms. Their performance video works usually utilize found sounds accompanied by instrumentation and composition challenging notions of consonance and dissonance. For this exhibition Kang and Nicolay reinterpret an earlier collaboration sculpture entitled Security Blanket. It is comprised of a bed frame with a quilt, the frame is collected from Tainan city and the blanket is made by hundreds of facemasks collected from Taiwan and Japan then sewn together. The facemasks all share similar pastoral colors and rectangular patterns reflecting the formal qualities of quilting while retaining the historical context rooted in social issues. The transformation of the facemasks into a blanket quite literally speaks to this notion of safety, preservation and security while at the same time creating a polarized dialogue with the traditional quilting process. The Padding through the Divide was an origami boat made by Finish historical book pages combined with pine needles, salvaged wooden pallets and other materials. The sculpture installation replaced into different form in the gallery space due to the changed of the locations. It responds to the overall concept of the exhibition how the culture boundaries transferred. Throughout this exhibition the artists’ individual and collective works examine cultural boundaries and social constructions of identity as well as how we individually know ourselves in a growing global fabric increasingly becoming crisscrossed and blurred. The exhibition is constructed mostly of found and recycled materials that are then transformed into mixed media drawings, sculptures, video and installation.

''Somewhere in Between the Boundaries'' Confessions from the Artist: KANG, YA-CHU

Physical movement stimulates the sense and sensation about environment. Journeys bring in cross-cultural impacts. Thus, common items might be transformed to be symbols of extremes under certain circumstances. The art works on this exhibition are meant to stir discussions about people and environments, about the status and phenomenon caused by boundaries, which cut and divide a whole into parts. The boundaries here could be those which define nations and lands, new and old, nature and human, journey and settlement, black and white, life and death. I try to explore the connections and meanings built on medium and culture via commonly-seen daily items, such as shoes, comic books, cloth, threads, etc. It is my attempt to reflect on the connections between personal experiences and living environment; in addition, it embodies my sense and sensation on modern as well as traditional textile fabrics.

Introduction of Works─

“Flower Gynoecium” With pages from Asian adult comics and Western Marvel comics, the models of flowers are formed to represent the relationships between female and male, oriental and western, nature and human. The petals and pistil in full bloom are transformed into gracefully swirling skirts and the attractive leg postures, the token of female qualities. Meanwhile, the grass by the blossoming flowers symbolizes companionship and symbiosis, the token of male qualities. On the one hand, it is an interpretation of objectifying the female under current social values. On the other hand, it is a way to indicate the surprising similarity of relationships between male and female both in nature and human society. Out of instinct and sub-consciousness, the shared experience corresponds to natural disciplines. Comics, removed narratives and written words, with merely lines and patterns left provide viewers with free imaginations about natural images and human bodies, and about organisms reproducing.

“On Foot” In “homo mensura theory”, humankind is the measure of all things, and everything is relative to human apprehension and evaluation. Without humankind, the images describing human activity in nature are incomplete. However, the existence of humankind is merely adventitious. There is no objective truth and standards due to different viewpoint and experiences might result in different cognitions. This piece of work transforms measures into knots and circles. By employing the vegetable fibers of pine trees, black and white short-edged paper lines form the structure and outlines of sketches in the air. The color black and white contrast to each other. With the shadows made by lights, a clear mark is complete to connect and tell stories and plots they tend to offer.

“Desert Tapestry” Back in November 2015, I attended the “Global Nomadic Art Project” in India. I experienced short-term nomadic life at Kutch county in the north part of Gujarat in the north-eastern India. A white desert in its north region borders on Pakistan. In rainy season, the desert would become wet lands while it would be covered with thick crystalline salt due to the parched weather in dry season. Dark earth would emerge out of broken sheet of crystalline salt. The toil from stepping on crystalline salt on the ground is epitomized through patterns of traditional female clothing of local tribe, Vandh. The textures of flowers and birds were linked with nature. Also, these threads reflected human’s respect for nature. Thus, the desert carpet was created to communicate with nature.

''Somewhere in Between the Boundaries'' Confessions from the Artist: Christian Nicolay

The wooden shipping pallet has no home, constantly in transit or at rest. It is the unsung hero disregarded in alleyways when it is not transporting goods from one place to another. Its dualistic life span of having value when serving its purpose and its worthless abandonment when not creates a paradoxical existence that attracts my attention. This is the starting point for the concept of the works in this exhibition reflecting the materialness of the pallet placed somewhere in between the boundaries.

My new series examines the division of space and time by cutting, layering and separating images playing with various ways of presenting and transforming conventional 2D painting. The combination of salvaged and found things with bought and made materials creates paradoxical objects which sit somewhere between the precious and the worthless. Giving life to everyday objects pushing the boundaries of what has value, and what does not, regarding the disregarded aims to speak to current issues where cultural landscapes are increasingly becoming and blurred from globalization, shifting borders, war, geo-politics, and the current refugee crisis.

My explorations lie somewhere in those moments of transition between the old and new, stretched between the ephemeral and the permanent, injecting the unusual into the familiar, documenting the present while remembering the past.

My art practice is about paying attention to systematic confusion the unity of opposites regarding the disregarded, finding the unusual in the familiar where the ephemeral and the permanent coincide a paradox doesn't know why its a paradox.They say there are 2 sides to every coin, but actually there are 3 sides.