Lighting of life

curator｜HSU Yuan-Ta

artist｜ Lee Kit、 Hsu Jui-Chien、Huang Xuan 、Lai Chih-Sheng

exhibition｜2023.06.17 (Sat.) - 2023.07.30 (Sun.)

opening ｜2023.06.18 (Sun.) 15 : 00

Forum｜2021.06.18 (Sun.) 15 : 30

A decade in Absolute Space is like a folded page in the dawn. Throughout the past decade, the constant flow of life has been noted in ways obscure, yet reminding all the absolute love not only for art, but also for life. Therefore, for our tenth anniversary, we’ve invited artists, who even with their absolute idiosyncrasies in creative forms, manage to radiate the daily norms of life. Their works are like the loose chippings underfoot, folding the pages of life without causing the slightest hindrance.

Lee Kit picked fragment pieces he randomly collected in his daily life. These things stand as unintentional projections of real life. The tapes on the wall remind the audience that these are simply the folds that mark the countless pages in life. Behind what is real hides so much more that are just as real. The works of Lai Chih-Sheng have subtracted the absolute physical matters. One by one, Lai took away matters in each subtraction to make feelings and life tangible, in order for the audience to touch what is alive. What appears to be empty is simply the other dimension of life. On the other hand, Hsu Jui-Chien first worked hard in fighting against the nature of his materials, envisioning the iron stick as the beater for temple blocks. However, Hsu ended up discovering the folds of life in absolute silence. Therefore, he stood calmly observing the hairballs in life in tranquility. For Huang Xuan, she marks her body and places it back in life to mirror her strong desire to see it all. Her works create breaks in the constant rhythm of life. The protrusions may be trivial, but unignorable.

Time flows silently as dust slowly swirls under the sun. Here, the poetry concerning ordinary life is noted as each artist comes around, creating folds to mark the pages in life.

A decade in Absolute Space is like a folded page in the dawn. Throughout the past decade, the constant flow of life has been noted in ways obscure, yet reminding all the absolute love not only for art, but also for life. Therefore, for our tenth anniversary, we’ve invited artists, who even with their absolute idiosyncrasies in creative forms, manage to radiate the daily norms of life. Their works are like the loose chippings underfoot, folding the pages of life without causing the slightest hindrance.

Lee Kit picked fragment pieces he randomly collected in his daily life. These things stand as unintentional projections of real life. The tapes on the wall remind the audience that these are simply the folds that mark the countless pages in life. Behind what is real hides so much more that are just as real. The works of Lai Chih-Sheng have subtracted the absolute physical matters. One by one, Lai took away matters in each subtraction to make feelings and life tangible, in order for the audience to touch what is alive. What appears to be empty is simply the other dimension of life. On the other hand, Hsu Jui-Chien first worked hard in fighting against the nature of his materials, envisioning the iron stick as the beater for temple blocks. However, Hsu ended up discovering the folds of life in absolute silence. Therefore, he stood calmly observing the hairballs in life in tranquility. For Huang Xuan, she marks her body and places it back in life to mirror her strong desire to see it all. Her works create breaks in the constant rhythm of life. The protrusions may be trivial, but unignorable.

Time flows silently as dust slowly swirls under the sun. Here, the poetry concerning ordinary life is noted as each artist comes around, creating folds to mark the pages in life.

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Curator Yuan-Ta Hsu is an Assistant Professor and art critic at Tainan University of Technology in Taiwan. He earned his Ph.D. degree from the Fine Arts Doctoral Program at Texas Tech University, with his dissertation, entitled Memories and Identities: Hsiang Chou in the Photographic Works of Lang Jing-Shan and Chen Shun-Chu. Dr. Hsu received M.A. in Art Criticism, Graduate Institute of Art History and Art Criticism in 2004 from Tainan National University of the Arts. He specializes in the Taiwanese art history, with an emphasis on contemporary Taiwanese sculpture and the history of photography. His research focuses on nostalgia, memories, identities and local folk culture in Taiwanese history. In addition, his recent work explores Tainan contemporary art history since the 1980s. Dr. Hsu has curated several exhibitions, among which are Sio pang phuann (Labour Exchange) Opening Exhibition of the Taikang Culture Center (2019, Taikang Culture Center, Tainan); Sui Generis: Jing-Pai of Taiwan I, II, III (2018-2019, IT Park, Taipei); Seascape: Lee, Jiun-Shyan Solo Exhibition (2017, Absolute Space, Tainan); the 2017 Traveling Exhibition of Excellent Tainan Artists: “Tainan Ablaze: A Duo Exhibition by Hsu, Tzu-Kuey & Tsneg, Ying-Tung” (2017-2018, Tainan, Taipei, Taichung, Yilan and Kaohsiung); Fully Loaded Tainan - New York (2017, Pfizer Building, New York, US); Body Grid–Consciousness in Interstice of Chair Group Exhibition (2017, Tainan); Evoke: The Revealed Taiwanese Subjectivity (2016, Tainan); Sweet Memories–Soulangh International Contemporary Art Festival 2016 (2016, Tainan); Guerrilla Group–Bai Ma Tou (2003, Kaohsiung International Container Arts Festival, Kaohsiung). Most of these exhibitions examine Taiwanese culture, history, memories and identities.

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Lee Kit, Born in 1978 in Hong Kong, Lee Kit lives and works in Taiwan.

Recent solo exhibitions include: Hong-gah Museum, Taipei, Taiwan (2023), Kuandu Museum of Art, Taipei, Taiwan (2022), West, Den Haag, the Netherland (2021), Art Sonje Centre, Seoul, Korea (2019), Hara Museum, Tokyo, Japan (2018), Casa Masaccio, San Giovanni Valdarno, Italy (2018), OCAT, Shenzhen, China (2018), The Cube, Taipei, Taiwan (2017), S.M.A.K., Ghent, Belgium (2016); Walker Art Centre, Minneapolis, U.S.A. (2016), Shiseido Gallery, Tokyo (2015), and the 55th Venice Biennale, Italy (2013), Shanghai Minsheng Museum of Art (2012), Western Front, Vancouver, Canada (2011), Para/Site, Hong Kong (2007), among others.

Group shows include: Kunstverein in Hamburg, Germany (2021), Lyon Biennial, France (2019); Honolulu Biennial, Hawaii (2019); Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France (2017); Kathmandu Triennale, Nepal (2017); National Gallery in Prague, Czech Republic (2016); Sharjah Biennial, UAE (2015); Ural Industrial Biennial, Yekaterinburg, Russia (2015); Staatliche Kunsthalle, Baden Baden, Germany (2014); Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastrich, Netherlands (2014); Hugo Boss Asia Art, Rockbund Museum, Shanghai, China (2013); MoMA, New York, U.S.A. (2012); New Museum, New York, U.S.A.(2015 & 2012), among others.

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Hsu Jui-Chien, Born 1994 in Miaoli. Work in Taipei, Taiwan. We feel the world with our bodies and senses. Only creation can make the answer of the curiosity of the materials after the impact and actions. The spirit of the materials itself and the influence between the circulation are directly intimacy. It seems like they are awaking the unknown consciousness or exploring the ambiguous contradiction.

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Huang Xuan was born in 1995 in Taipei, Taiwan. With most of her works being performance and film, she uses her own body as the material, and uses simple but persistent movements as a scale for testing in the environment, exploring the many subtle limitations and the operations of routine in daily life. She also focuses on objects and their functions in life to discover their interrelationship with human gestures and images in use and tries to reverse the audience's perception through misuse.

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Lai Chih-Sheng, Born 1971 in Taipei, Taiwan; based in Taipei, Taiwan

Delicate interventions in space and the landscape - a pulled thread, a hole gathering droplets of water, a tree emerging from the walls. Lai Chih-Sheng (b. 1971, Taiwan) pursues a practice that plays with tension, the everyday and personal encounters across multiple mediums in particular installation and sculpture. There is a playful minimalism in the way he observes detail and creates relationships between different parts of a room, engaging the viewer’s sense of body and presence. During the 1990s Lai Chih-Sheng was a member of the conceptual art group National Oxygen, presenting his early work in disused structures around the periphery of Taipei, which often involved seemingly futile labour. As such, there are certain pervading traits throughout his work: an affinity to environment and space, a sense of expanse, a lyrical delicacy that engages our curiosity.