The Double Flame / A Solo Exhibition by Chen Hui-Chiao
Date: 19 July ~ 16 August, 2008
Venue: IT Park
Artist Statement:
A black and white star, burning hot and ice cold. A cloud protecting energy is reality and mirage. A stunning ray of brilliance travels at the speed of light and is red and blue. The double flame of life is a process followed by dream makers, a bridge facilitating spiritual connection between us.
If being a hero involves gambles on the unexpected in different periods of time, then it refers not to eternal life but to pure vitality; a feeling as vast as any ocean overwhelmed by the entirety of existence and a sense of wavering. Resolved in a single note that is not affirmation or negation but acceptance.
If art is like love then we fix our gaze on someone who attracts us and he or she stares right back. What do we see in that singular moment? It is as if we see everything and nothing all at once. This holy furor, enthusiasm: the sense of recovering the whole of our spiritual nature and the discovery of the self as a wholeness within the Great Whole. This is a journey of intent, a heartbeat of time.
If a soul which once imprisoned an entire God, Veins that brought fuel to such flames, Marrow that so gloriously burned… They'll leave this body, but not its cares: Ash they'll be, yet still aware; They will be dust, but dust in love.1
The earth, sky and sea; astrology, traversing the oceans and flying; Uranus, Neptune and Pluto; vision, transcendence and transformation… If the soul is truly immortal, I should thank my fellow travelers - I encounter as we create or put more accurately: art, the poetry of space, is a theater in which we learn, perform, embrace and resolve conflicts together. Even though, there is very fine line between "imagination" (based only on mental images) and actual direct experience of spiritual realities! We must still look, together, at the world that surrounds us. We must go farther, until we encounter the unknown.
(2008.07.01)
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1 Octavio Paz, 1993 “The Double Flame: Love and Eroticism” English translation copyright, 1995 by Harcourt, Inc. The poem “Love constant beyond Death”(p. 73.) by Quevedo(1580-1645), translated by Eliot Weinberger. Copyright 1987 by Eliot Weinberger. Reprinted by permission of the translator.
