深時 Glacial
展期 Dates｜2021.09.11-2021.11.06
藝術家 Artists｜許聖泓 SHIU Sheng-Hung、約瑟芬娜‧聶利馬勒卡 Josefina NELIMARKKA
展出地點 Venue｜本事藝術 Solid Art
「雖然我們只是地球表面的旅居者，拘束在太空中的一個小點，只在世上停留短暫的一刻，但人類不但有能力計算出在肉眼視野之外有多少世界，也能查探出在人類誕生前的不明年代有何事發生。」
— 查爾斯 ‧ 萊爾
《地質學原理》 ，1830年
展覽集結兩位來自台歐兩地不同文化/自然景觀，擁有截然不同的創作表現形式，卻都著迷於時間、流逝與變動概念的藝術家，不約而同踏入地質、材料與氣候的科學領域並進而展開的交互對話。
許聖泓從繪畫與風景畫的角度及歷史出發，深入地推演色粉礦物的古典與當代應用，以零散破碎的畫面交織共構出對於時間、物質的觀點。此次展出的全新系列「冰川風景」(The Glacial Landscape) 猶如沉積了悠遠圖像的當代人類世風景，層疊著材料蘊含的人與自然、經濟開發、科技發展的關係。相對於遊歷瑞士、冰島的冰川的異國視覺/體感經驗，是許聖泓以熱愛造訪的台灣山林、植物為題材，從台灣的生物地理史的溯源延伸出的認同議題，試圖從多重的線索與時間觀建立更多元包容的視角，定位自身與世界的相互關係。
擁有扎實繪畫訓練背景的約瑟芬娜‧聶利馬勒卡 (Josefina NELIMARKKA)，則因熱愛科學研究與跨學科合作，展出作品涵括文字、雕塑、影像、互動科技等多樣形式，以多重感官體驗體現對環境生態與時間概念的非線性思考。「未來的記憶」(Future Memories)中，藝術家於南極、蘇格蘭艾倫島的冰河遺跡等地，收集化石、冰心與礦物等時間證物，透過科技技術顯影地球萬年來的記憶圖型，與指引未來氣候的線索。「歲差」(Precession) 則以色粉、礦物作為理解生命處境的切入點，探索更深邃不可知的變動與其推力，在微觀物質與浩瀚宇宙之間，展開對於存在的終極叩問。
「深時」的地質時間概念與科學帶給兩位藝術家無與倫比的創作啟發與哲思，他們卻意不在精準解碼，而是透過色彩調度畫筆/顯微鏡下的感性風景，體現一個整體相連的世界。而時間的荒野裡，物換星移的速度可以是億萬年或轉瞬間，當冰川不再是恆常不變的風景*，而萬年後天琴座將成為全新的指北星，對於時間的感知與想像尺度，已然是人類作為個體和物種有效運作的必要智慧與靈感所依。
(*冰川的英文形容詞有極緩慢、難以察覺其變動的意涵 )
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Glacial
Exhibition dates｜2021.09.11-2021.11.06
Artists｜SHIU Sheng-Hung, Josefina NELIMARKKA
Venue｜Solid Art, Taipei, Taiwan.
“Although we are mere sojourners on the surface of the planet, chained to a mere point in space, enduring but for a moment of time, the human mind is not only enabled to number worlds beyond the unassisted ken of mortal eye, but to trace the events of indefinite ages before the creation of our race.”
—— Sir Charles Lyell
In Principles of Geology (1830)
“Glacial” features two artists coming respectively from Taiwan and Europe, each of which has its own distinctive cultural and natural landscapes. Despite the different art forms expressed in their works, both of them are fascinated by the concepts of temporality, elapsed time and variability; coincidentally, they also step into the fields of geology, material science and climatology that leads to the interactive dialogues generated in this exhibition.
From the viewpoint of the history of painting and landscape art, SHIU Sheng-Hung engages himself in the exploration of mineral pigments through both classical and contemporary painting techniques; accordingly, Shiu’s paintings consist primarily of scattered fragments of colors so as to manifest his interwoven perspective on time and materiality. His new series called The Glacial Landscape is to be showcased at the gallery, depicting the contemporary landscape in the Anthropocene with patterns that signify archaic deposits; also, with the layering of paints, it reflects the underlying interrelated dynamics of human activities, nature, economic expansion, and technological development. In comparison with the visual and physical experiences of exotic glacier tours in Switzerland and Iceland, the mountains forests and plants in Taiwan that Shiu is drawn to visit were also the chosen subject matter. By focusing on the identity issue arising from the biogeographic history of Taiwan, he seeks to develop a more diverse and inclusive point of view based on multiple clues and time perspectives, thereby defining the interrelationship between the self and the world.
With a solid background in painting, Josefina Nelimarkka is also enthusiastic about scientific research and interdisciplinary collaboration, which contributes to the diverse art forms in her works including text, sculpture, moving images and interactive technology; hence, these multisensory-based art practices have embodied Nelimarkka’s ecological consciousness and notion of time in non-linear thinking. In Future Memories, she worked with fossils, ice cores and minerals —— as the evidence of the passage of time —— collected from the glacial relics revealed in Antarctica and the Isle of Arran in Scotland, and, through the use of technology to visualize the reminiscences of Earth explained by natural samples over tens of thousands of years, the representation provides clues to the future climate scenarios; in Precession, color pigments and minerals act as the entry point to the examination of life situations so as to further dig into the unpredictable changes and the forces lying behind. In this sense, with its visual language straddling the microscopic imagery of material composition and the projected image of the immense universe, this work aims to raise the ultimate question of existence.
Both Shiu and Nelimarkka were greatly inspired by the concept of geological timescale known as “deep time” and science in terms of their art practices and relevant philosophical reflections. However, instead of decoding their findings precisely, both artists create their own color palettes for transforming those features into textured paintings or the emotion-evoking images observed under the microscope with a view to presenting an interconnected world as a whole. As a matter of fact, in the vast expanse of time, everything changes either in the blink of an eye or at a gradual pace that takes billions of years. Thus, given that glacial landscapes are no longer considered immovable*, and the Vega in the constellation Lyra is believed to be the future North Star ten thousand years from now, it is obvious the intellectual functioning and inspiration of the human race, in either the cultural sense or the biological sense, are dependent fundamentally upon the scales of our perception and imagination of time.