Traces
This series of pictures are about the “presence of absence”. From the beginning of photography’s born, it is treated as the proof of the existence which is before the lens. It is different from painting or other art medium because people think photography is out of the control of human, the pictures they make are the precise reproduction of nature. Although along with the coming of digital era, people don’t trust photography’s objectiveness like earlier time, it is still a most common and powerful way to convey visual information. We are in the epoch of images, people conform in the surrounding of images even do not think about what these pictures mean. So I get the idea of using pictures – a visualized way to deliver information – to represent the concept of divisualizing. In all these pictures, there was something used to be there but it is not there anymore. The absent things are that people usually familiar with, like the video on a projection, the words on a green board, William Turner’s painting in the museum, etc. For some reason they are gone, but they leave behind some kind of “traces” that people could imagine what should be there. These pictures are also concerned with time. The traces of things are etched by time, with the flow of time. Finally the original thing will thoroughly disappear; all we can find is the trace it left behind. The evidence of the presence would be stronger and stronger. This is what Derrida said in his book “Of Grammatology,” the signifier became the signified, the sign became the real, the absence became the presence, and then the new reality was born.
痕迹
这个系列的照片希望表现关于“不存在事物的存在”。自从摄影诞生之日起它就被当作存在事物的证明。不同于绘画和其他艺术媒介，人们认为摄影是脱离于人们主观控制的，它是自然事物的精确复制。尽管随着数码时代的到来人们已不像原来那样相信摄影的客观性，它仍然是视觉信息传达最常见也最有效的方式。在一个图片爆炸的时代，人们被大量图片包围而逐渐忽略了思考图片的含义。所以我试图使用图片，一种传达信息的视觉方式，来表现去视觉化的事物。在这些照片中，都有一些曾经存在的东西，但是现在消失了。消失的东西往往是人们熟悉的事物：投影仪上的视频，黑板上的粉笔字，画册中梵高的画等等。因为某些原因，它们现在都不在了，但它们留下了某种“痕迹”使得观看的人能够感受和想象它们曾经的存在。而通过感受和想象，“痕迹”重新唤起人们对于存在事物的思考。虽然关于原始事物的一切最终会完全消失，但却会留下痕迹。痕迹总是在时间的流逝之中变得越来越强。正如德里达所说：“能指将变为所指，符号成为了真实，不存在成为了存在，这时新的现实就诞生了。”