Lost in the shadows

In Lee Ming-wei's (李明維) exhibition The Shadow and its Double (對影), now on display at the Eslite Gallery, shadows appear as the dark and obscured doubles of real objects. The installation includes a room of 11 person-height black forms on castors, a video system that lets the viewer see himself or herself from both sides of a one-way mirror, and a miniature set of shelves holding black clay sculptures contributed by visitors to the gallery.

Shadows are an old theme. They've represented the phantasmal, otherworldly and in various epoques the dark sides of nature and man. In modernism, shadows were associated with psychology and its new concept of the subconscious. Art and literature used shadows to represent the substrata of the Self, the hidden Mr. Hydes behind the Dr. Jekylls of the world of appearances.

In postmodernism, the shadow theme has lent itself to the concept of simulacra, doubles that bear a perfect resemblance to the original but are still not identical with it. Interpretations have often applied technology or science fiction to the shadows of our contemporary era: things like androids and video images.

Through Lee's English title, The Shadow and its Double, he seems to imply something very postmodern, like the simulacra of a shadow, which would have been a cool concept had he developed it. But he didn't. Instead he offered more of a sophomoric interpretation of shadows, muddling a whole history of shadow themes into a single ambiguous whole -- this exhibition. He also offers work that purports to be interactive, but with the exception of the video installation, is statically fixed in the gallery space. Though there is interactive potential, the exhibition really lacks an "on" switch, a catalyst to get the viewer involved.

The show is Lee's first in Taipei. He was born in Taiwan, educated in the US and now lives in New York. His resume is impressive, beginning with a Master of Fine Arts degree from America's top program, Yale, and ending with solo shows at three major venues in 2003, including one at New York's prestigious Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). Presumably these are actually scheduled, but I still find this resume of the future to be not much more than pretentious name dropping.

The best part of the exhibition is the video piece involving the one-way mirror. The mirror sits in the corner of the gallery, drawing viewers over to investigate. When they look back towards the entrance, they discover that they've been captured by a video camera and that after a time lag of a few seconds, the image is being projected on a screen of frosted glass. In the projection, they can either see their real self from the back or their shadow self looking back at them through the mirror. It's worth a few minutes of perusal, and fortunately Eslite's CD store is now located immediately next to the gallery, so no visit will ever be a total loss.

Lee Ming-wei's The Shadow and its Double is on display at the Eslite Gallery (誠品畫廊) located at B2, No. 243, Sec. 1, Tunhua S. Rd. (北市敦化南路一般243號B2) until Dec. 29.