I saw this scene at an art gallery in Taipei two years ago. It was part of an open-air
installation consisting of hanging fabric. It was a cross between a maze of corridors
and doorways and someone’s washing hanging out to dry on a line.
On a calm day, everything was static. When I visited the gallery, the wind was up, and
the sheets were flappng in the breeze.
In a two-dimensional photograph, the scene becomes a cacophony of shapes and
shadows. There are rectangles and triangles, rhombuses and arrow-heads, irregular
shapes, truncated shapes, thin lines bisecting thick lines, thick lines cutting through
curves, parallel lines and lines diverging or converging, areas of shade and areas of light,
hard lines and creases, sheets hanging vertically and others intruding at an angle, floorboards
and a skewed banister, and all framed by an arch.
The colors were added later.
這幅景緻是我兩年前在台北一間藝廊所見。那是一個戶外的裝置藝術,垂掛著布匹,看上去
就像是介於某種走廊之迷宮及晒衣場之間的混合體。
在無風的日子,一切都是靜止的。我來到藝廊的那天有風,布匹在微風中飄舞著。
在照片裡,景色平面化,變成了幾何與光影的隨機組合。矩形與三角形,菱形與箭頭,不規則
的形狀,被裁切為新的形狀,細小的線條彼此分割,粗大的直線截過圓弧處,線條彼此平行、又
時而分岔、時而聚集,光與影形成各自的區塊,堅硬的實線與皺摺,布匹直直地垂下而其他物體
則歪斜地湧入,還有地板與傾斜的欄杆,這一切,都鑲在一座拱門裡。
而所有的色彩都是後來才加上的。
(台北時報涂宇安譯)
Johann says
Ah, beautiful! And as I know, you never crop your original pictures. The pastels are an interesting choice, as they are usually considered weak, especially if you work in black and white. But then you add the small stretched-block of solids that work well to add depth and power.
Overall, the effect is clean and crisp, yet there is an underlying menace. The lower-left fabric is so straight that it could be the legs of a Sifu being kicked out from beneath him by some villain unseen, colliding into his bodyguard. The wind has created a ‘wonderful aftermath’ (which is no longer an oxymoron in our times).
Or is it all just the lens? ;>)