bear hole
2023/03/04-2023/04/29
Artists | TING Chaong Wen, WANG Hsiang Lin
Solid Art is honoured to present its annual curatorial project “Citing Bar”, the title of which is derived from the term “Politics of Citation” to correspond to the core spirit of the project, that is, to acknowledge origins, borders and ordeals, thereby building a sense of solidarity for the purpose of enabling land, the environment, human and more-than-human to prosper together. We wish to explore various forms of knowledge, ecological wisdom and non-Western worldviews and to transmit such transformative energy into this planet that is bombarded by multiple crises and conflicts. Apart from exhibitions, participatory events including research, reading, writing and publication will be organised to raise sustained awareness of care and justice.
Titled “bear hole”, the first exhibition within the project draws its inspiration from Canadian indigenous oral narratives and the live experiences of the two participating artists, TING Chaong-Wen and WANG Hsiang-Lin, aiming to examine the creative burnout in art production and the state of physical and mental exhaustion in the wake of the milieus of homogenization of time, linear development and capital growth as a whole. By rethinking and resetting the notion of one-dimensional time perspective, the exhibition presents alternative flows, scales, and forms of life that initiate a more dialogic relationship, thus allowing ways of worldmaking to become more sustainable and creative.
The artworks on show bring into focus TING’s and WANG’s experiences of short breaks, returns, dreams and road trips as sources of creative inspiration for them. The barren and solitude landscape scenes in their works act as portals to other worlds. In moments of retrospection, monologues, and getting lost in unconscious dialogues with the “good-for-nothing” frontiers, one no longer perceives time as linear when being present in nature and witnessing its intersectionalities of accumulation and being recycled back into the environment, which render one’s vision and sensation sharper. Hence, the field of seeming emptiness is where the materials speak their languages; and where the body and mind settle.
Titled “bear hole”, the first exhibition within the project draws its inspiration from Canadian indigenous oral narratives and the live experiences of the two participating artists, TING Chaong-Wen and WANG Hsiang-Lin, aiming to examine the creative burnout in art production and the state of physical and mental exhaustion in the wake of the milieus of homogenization of time, linear development and capital growth as a whole. By rethinking and resetting the notion of one-dimensional time perspective, the exhibition presents alternative flows, scales, and forms of life that initiate a more dialogic relationship, thus allowing ways of worldmaking to become more sustainable and creative.
The artworks on show bring into focus TING’s and WANG’s experiences of short breaks, returns, dreams and road trips as sources of creative inspiration for them. The barren and solitude landscape scenes in their works act as portals to other worlds. In moments of retrospection, monologues, and getting lost in unconscious dialogues with the “good-for-nothing” frontiers, one no longer perceives time as linear when being present in nature and witnessing its intersectionalities of accumulation and being recycled back into the environment, which render one’s vision and sensation sharper. Hence, the field of seeming emptiness is where the materials speak their languages; and where the body and mind settle.
