Chou Yu-Cheng runs a conversational discussion on art with his old time collage professor and long-tern friend Yen Ye-Cheng to unfold a cross generation exploration and exchange on artistic subjects, such as aesthetic, taste, form and content to depict the (con)temporaneity as a duet. If we take Bruno Latour’s idea that modernity’s definition exactly points to “the passage time,” then we perhaps could observe in reverse that their speech act reveals the driving force of modernity in the context of art history—how such force has shaped the modernization of art in terms of its ecology, trend, fashion and institution. The conversation also investigates the contemporary art rhetoric, and inquires in to the evolution, narratives, feedbacks and struggles interweaving through generation to generation in the passage of time.

Apart from the sound installation, here presents another from of conversation: a recent painting of Yen and Chou’s imitation on this painting in the style of a monochrome could be reviewed in juxtaposition. The confrontation of these two paintings, together with their separated original creative intents and aesthetic questions produce a bewildering visual experience while spinning rich layers of aesthetic circulation. This installation knocks on a suspended question concerning temporaneity that modernity leaves behind: what is the practice today that could still keep informing the intimate interplay between literati traditions, philosophy of art, spiritual construction and the exercise of individual reasoning, taste, manner and attitude? It is via the invisible and abstract composition, displacement and flow of this installation in its space-time that such simple but fundamental question eventually comes to reveal its face: what is art now? This conceptualized and pronounced question expands itself in the conversation between art and life, and requests its validation from artists and connoisseurs of all times.

Shall we take temporaneity as the content of this artwork instead of the framework, Chou’s project provides a visual presentation and aesthetic language to interpret the development of art history with a witty twist and an enthralling play.（Text: Esther Lu）