ARTIST STATEMENT
My works focus mainly on three-dimensional art forms considered as soft sculptures or installations, which carry organic or abstract forms revealing the materials’ quality, and constructing logic. They are made from soft, light, flexible and mundane objects such as cable ties, rubble sacks, clothes-pegs, tarpaulin covers, net fabric, clay, tapes, and pipe insulations. The experimental processes involve in hand skills including folding, cutting, sticking, combining, layering, and coiling.
My main concepts are being creative, inventive, and playful to reveal new ways of making and looking at existing objects, materials, and sculptures. In Robert Morris’s essay ‘Some Notes on the phenomenology’ (1970), Morris stated that the form of a three-dimensional object appears through the procedures and processes of its creation, of which the choice of material is the most significant [1]. Within my practice, the formation is directly influenced by the constructing processes and the material choices. My criteria for selecting material or object should be easily accessible, inexpensive, mass-produced, and unusual for sculptural making.
Every material comes with its own procedure, capacity, and peculiarities of language and vocabulary. I identified and utilized them to construct alternative sculptural works. One of my works which called ‘Wave’ was made from rubble sacks, tarpaulin covers and double side tapes. The interrelationship between these materials was discovered or invented, they were further combined and transformed to a light and soft three-dimensional piece that could support each other and stand by itself under gravity. This idea of utilizing the material language for creation was also illustrated in my other works like ‘Task’, ‘Foreign Matter’, and ‘Variety’.
I investigated the application of colour and surface in my practice. Although the connection between sculpture and colour may not be essential, it could potentially generate different levels of impact on both the work itself and the viewing experience. For example, my latest work series called ‘Variety’, were made from pipe insulations and tape which verified the idea. By using different colours and types of tape, it provokes diversified surface effects such as reflective, fluorescent and matte, this seems to make the form sharper or more vibrant. Besides, their weight, materiality, and performance have the potential to be installed and displayed in either bright or dark space, indoor or outdoor. Also, they can be attached to buildings providing different experiences and perceptions to viewers. Furthermore, by manipulating the scale and space, my work interacts with the viewers in which their visual movement and behavior are affected by the condition of where, what and how the representation is exhibit before them.
One of my artist influences was Tara Donovan, who uses everyday materials to make large scale sculptures or installations that appear organic or natural formation. My idea of sculpturing everyday materials is similar to Donovan, such as the use of materials, and the way of thinking, making and generating. I imagine myself as an explorer and inventor in the field of sculpturing unconventional materials and objects. I think of practice as process, material as significant, colour as additive, space and scale as physical and psychological manipulation. I attempt to develop a sensitivity to materiality, formation, colour, scale and space. This enables the creation of own art piece which carries a unique formation, peculiarity and demonstrates inventiveness.
Bibliography
Collins, Judith. Sculpture today. (London: Phaidon Press, 2007).
[1]Collins, Judith. Sculpture today. (London: Phaidon Press, 2007).