Tsai Ken’s (蔡根) sculptures are difficult to comprehend. Engaging the intellect to decipher the 24 sculptures in his exhibit at Main Trend Gallery (大趨勢畫廊), titled The Great Form Without Shape (大象無形), misses the point.
“I just want people to experience their own feelings through my art,” Tsai said.
Rather than appealing to reason, Tsai’s works are meant to express an emotion or create an ambiance. This necessitates an attitude that gallerygoers used to taking an academic approach to art may find arduous.
The exhibit’s title is taken from a line found in Chapter 41 of Lao Tzu’s (老子) Tao Te Ching (道德經), which suggests that most of what we consciously perceive is an illusion. Tsai employs this idea by generating a space between our perception of an object and the object itself.
“Take painting for example,” Tsai said. “When you look at a painting, you think it is beautiful, but really the painting isn’t that important. For me, what is important is the feeling experienced when looking at it.”
Some of the sculptures in The Great Form Without Shape hark back — both formally and thematically — to Tsai’s 2006 exhibit Still Life, which was composed of a series of sculptures made from readymade and natural objects that wouldn’t look out of place in an IKEA catalogue.
One featured a twig placed over a ball made from iron wire set atop a wooden pedestal; another consisted of long bamboo poles tightly arranged in and sticking out of a
Chinese pot emblazoned with colorful flowers.
These sculptures emphasized a spontaneity of design that evoked feelings
of freedom.
Interior Design 3 (室內陳設(三)) follows a similar modus operandi. Balls of wound iron wire, wooden and iron tables topped with objects and a stone lion are arranged on a large wooden matrix. Placed within the walls of the gallery, the work is a serene and simple space within a space.
Tsai’s other work plays tricks on viewers. Great Form Without Shape 2 (大象無形(二)), for example, appears from a distance to be a large mural of colorful flowers. On drawing closer, however, a large sculpture of an elephant adorned with the same floral pattern as the background comes into view. The space between the illusion and what becomes apparent brings us closer to the philosophical ideas underlying Tsai’s aesthetic creations and we begin to question the truthfulness of our own perceptions.
From far away, Buddha Without Form 1 (佛無象(一)) appears to be a dark ball resting on a stone tablet placed on top of a wooden pedestal.
Closer scrutiny reveals the outline of a head with long earlobes — turning the work into the severed head of a Buddhist statue. The sculpture makes an interesting point about worship.
“When people enter a temple they are not concerned too much with Buddhist sculptures,” Tsai said. “They are more interested in the feeling that the space generates.”
Tsai’s sculptures, whether fashioned to free our intellect or prompt us to question the limits of perception, offer augmented ways of experiencing art.
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