Chance of Déjà vu, a review on Chun-Yi Chang’s exhibition ‘Instant d’entre’
by Wen-Yao Chen
What then is time? If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him who asks, I do not know.
St Augustine
Chun-Yi Chang’s exhibition ‘Instant d’entre’, opens with the above mentioned quote. I could not help but imagine that as the moment when St Augustine was facing the probing of the others. Is not that an urgent yet hesitant moment which portraits ‘Instant d’entre’? A sudden, suspended and solidified moment.
‘Instant d’entre’ contains three sets of work: the Sky Blue, the Fairy Lake and the Carousel Waltz Series. These three sets of works have one thing in common: a moment of disorder hidden within a given repetition.
With the Sky Blue±1 from Sky Blue series, the artist has mentioned that the inspiration of this work came from 20th century American painter Richard Diebenkorn's Ocean Park. And Diebenkorn's works in this series were deeply influenced by Matisse's Porte-Fenêtre à Collioure and Vue de Notre-Dame. Matisse's window is juxtaposed long rectangular colour blocks of green, brown, bluish black and grey. The wall, the window casements are faintly discernible, but does the bluish black colour block in the middle represents the scenery inside or outside the window? The scenery from Diebenkorn's studio window in Santa Monica is depicted as abstract, elegant geometric blocks of colours. It gives us a sense of depth in space. And from the subtle charcoal lines, we can still feel the boundary between inside and outside. In Chun-Yi Chang’s Sky Blue±1, we can see that more than two thirds of the painting is the sky with deserted beaches and sparkling sea. It shown the poetic meaning of colour blocks, even though the painting does not contain window frame. It highlights the function of a window, making the scenery seemingly within reach, yet one can only gaze. There is no more sense of inside or outside, because it can be both.
We can find examples of the extraditing of worlds inside and outside of the window even in the early 15th century paintings. The reason why this element is so fascinating, is because that the image context can be rationalised by the viewers. At first glance, there is no conflicts in Sky Blue±1. There are two medium used in this work, a combination of photography (sky, beach of Santa Monica Ocean Park in Los Angeles) and video (Mediterranean Sea). The image may look realistic, but in fact, it is a collage of the artist’s thoughts. And the artist has quite a delicate approach too. The sky and beach are still, the sea is fluctuating and shimmering, which already complied with our understanding and imagination. If not because we hear the soft and lazy sound of wave when we approach the work, maybe we won’t even notice the change of shimmering sea level caused by the tide, and sometimes the scenery you see will temporarily be out of focus due to the heat of the sun.
The artist attempts to use the instantaneous stillness of photography and the continuous time extension of video recording to give us a sense of time quietly flowing. Indeed, we have had this experience, a normal day with a sudden realisation of the question ‘What time is it now?’, always feeling ‘moment’ passes by so quickly, not realising what hasn’t changed is that there are always 24 hours a day. Photography and Video recording are the representation of time. When Roland Barthes talked about photography, he said that he was scared of the ‘eyes’. What he can tolerate was only the action of finger pressing down on the shutter button: the sound of lens initiating, the ‘sound of time’. A photo represents a specific moment in time, therefore, old cameras become ‘clocks’ to Barthes. Then what about video recording? Perhaps we can say that, despite wether we viewed the video camera as a clock, within a limited scale, it repeats endlessly. So, if a video recording is a ‘two minutes’ loop, then what we see will be a ‘two minutes’ eternity. The paradox here is that when ‘moment’ turns into a photo, it becomes eternal. The sky and the beach will always be the same, the more difficult thing to capture is the endless shimmering sea. Both the abstract concept and the presentation approach of Sky Blue±1 are the dialectics of instant/eternity displacement. It is more like a monologue. And the other works around it, Sky Blue, On Slantiness, contains the colours of sky blue, deep sea blue, ocher yellow, is in the form of schema.
The Fairy Lake series starts from a game of hide and seek. Going onto the second floor, one will be greeted by lakeside sceneries that emanate bright, translucent quality and saturated colours. Standing a bit closer to the work, it is difficult to find a perspective point. Is it a photo? Or is it a painting? Fairy Lake is actually a swamp located in Fontainebleau forest. The lake itself has a sense of stagnation. The artist used macro lens to capture these shots, it gives a sense that the frequency fluctuations has been magnified, so due to the blurry effect it gives us the oil-painting-like strokes. And this effect combined with the sharp resolution of the lakeside created an exotic depth of field. Yet, it is still difficult to find where the artist stood to take these shots, where is she at when she saw these sceneries and took these shots? Is the inverted reality before our eyes a real reflection? Luckily the artist did not keep us waiting for too long, walk further and see more works of the series and we shall soon find out the position that is relative to where the artist stood and have a more complete sense of the whole lakeside scenery.
In the middle of the lake, there is a reflection of trees on the lakeside which intertwined with the reeds growing in the lake. With different shades of green intertwined, and the exuberant vegetation, the environment provides many shelters, which is ideal for a game of hide and seek. A little girl in red dress ran out from behind the biggest tree on the lakeside with lighthearted pace. The little girl blindfolded herself with her hands against the tree trunk counting: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7… The lake reflects her delayed reflection, the echo of the counting overlaps on each number, the little girl finished counting and looked up, go around behind the tree trunk and disappeared. As opposed to the seeker (the little girl), the audience becomes the hider who watches the time, and the seeker’s every move, as if the game has just started.
But the game never really started. The little girl continues to circle the big tree and counting, sometimes the numbers are not consecutive, sometimes she disappeared behind the tree for too long. Sometimes the sound of counting were mixed with the ambience sounds of birds and the forrest, and sometimes it is like whispers in our ears. Who can tell who’s where? The experience of seeing the works in the Fairy Lake series, felt like a walk in the maze. The only difference is that, a maze is a garden with many crossroads, and here, the artist only gave us one way to go. Patiently the artist planted subtle differences but enough to confuse along the way, causing the audience to come back and forth to search for the answer. This is how multiple layers of ‘time’ are made, numbers of what were suppose to to be coherent were not, and the little girl who was suppose to appear disappeared. We are always concerned about the ‘moment’ that we did not participate, thinking what we missed is ‘eternity’ (like looking at a photo and says: I was not in the photo).
Finally the ‘Carousel Waltz’, entering the third floor, a distant yet crisp melody ringing in the ears. The images of Carousel on the screens are only in grey and without any details. Implying that brilliance and dream are one. The opening of ’Carousel Waltz’ is different to its original broadway musical ‘Carousel’. The artist chose a music box version of the same music which removes the Magnificent and imposing feel of the original music, maintaining low profile, but the atmosphere will change totally once you enter. 18 Carousel shots from 18 different locations in Paris, filled all three walls of the exhibition hall in a single line fashion. Colourful, yet in different shapes, rotating simultaneously with the slightest rhythmic differences. And the Carousel Waltz was played at 18 different speed. The artist cuts away the top and bottom of the carousels intensionally, taking away the frames to pull the audience closer, providing an immersive experience for the audience. Once you are in it, it’s difficult not to be affected by its nostalgic happy atmosphere. Feels like if you can ride on one of the carousels in the next second and enter another dimension.
Growing up in Taiwan, maybe it’s difficult to see carousels. But not in Paris. From the Eiffel tower, Champ de Mars, Sacred Heart Church, Luxembourg Gardens and other well-known tourist attractions, to Saint Lombard Square, someplaces only the locals would know, it’s not difficult to find carousels. These carousels are usually the long residence in the area, and has became the collective memories of the local residence. A father who brought his son to come and have a ride on the carousel might have ridden on the exact same carousel after school in his childhood. And may be just like his son, once got on the carousel, never wants to get off even after the music has ended. Here, the carousel has nothing to do with the amusement park, it has become a product of everyday life and festival. And memories to be passed on must be collective, therefore if the carousel is not bustling with noise, it will seem a bit lonely. However, memory is individual, only ‘I’ know what happened when the carousel started rotating. So, from Sky Blue±1, Fairy Lake to Carousel Waltz, we come back to the monologue, like what St. Augustine said at the beginning of this review: “What then is time? If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him who asks, I do not know.”
The procedure of image is irreversible, this is one of the most depressing facts when it comes to video recording works. Different to painting or photography, the audience’s view can not stay freely at any specific poing, if one missed any second of the video, he/she has to replay the whole video to be able to view the same spot again. This raises another question, ‘what can be considered as completely finished viewing a video recording work?’ Is it viewing the whole video recording from start to finish once? Or maybe not from start to finish, but viewing it several times back and forth? With Chun-Yi Chang’s works, maybe we can use the latter method. View every entry point as the suture point. This also what’s fascinating about ‘Instant d’entre’, there are some refined disorder hidden in the works, which cause the audience to come back and reinspect the works (feeling not finished with the viewing of the works). But there’s no need to deliberately look for the linear starting and ending point of the image. With the sudden feeling of déjà-vu, experiencing the feel of the instant when we stand in front of the work, and how the instant of our thoughts when we are viewing the work intertwined with the limited eternity within the work.