ABOUT THE SHOW
Chih-Chien Wang: Short Sentences
Pierre-François Ouellette art contemporain is pleased to present Short Sentences, recent photographic and video work by Chih-Chien Wang - his first solo exhibition at the gallery - from March 26 to May 7, 2011. In this new series Wang offers an introspective view of domestic life captured through a dialogue of glimpses and gestures.
Short Sentences
"They are almost weightless, I thought, then I started to reassure myself: they are weightless, and this is normal.
I use photography to document everyday life and to record gestures and found objects. Sometimes a subject overlaps with others, and they become elements of a bigger subject. The accumulation of moments and gestures gradually forms scenes of life and suggests different ways to read life: life can be a performance, and life can be a found object.
Short Sentences creates a loose structure to review the documentation of everyday life. Its topics include motherhood, birth, relationships, travel, walking, new life, aging, repetition, a shifted position, photography, chance, illusion, surface and so forth, and its implications are vague. By structuring different topics as a whole, the work points to a small world and demands a physical space where interwoven experiences can be walked through and examined.
It is a small world made of short sentences. They murmur, and they unsettle. The sentences come quickly and leave quickly. They are almost weightless, and that is normal. "
- CCW
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Born in Taiwan, Chih-Chien Wang lives and works in Montreal. He studied cinema and theatre at the Chinese University in Taipei before moving to Canada, and holds an MFA in photography from Concordia University. His work is in the collections of the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography, the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal, the Musée de l'Elysée, Lausanne, Switzerland and the National Gallery of Canada which is currently showing three works as part of the exhibition "It Is What It Is: Recent Acquisitions of New Canadian Art" until April 10, 2011
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WORKS FOR SALE
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PHOTOGRAPHS
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Pineapple #1
2011
inkjet print
61 x 76.25 cm (24" x 30")
edition of 7 |
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Pineapple #3
2011
inkjet print
61 x 76.25 cm (24" x 30")
edition of 7 |
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Pineapple #6
2011
inkjet print
61 x 76.25 cm (24" x 30")
edition of 7 |
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Pineapple #7
2011
inkjet print
61 x 76.25 cm (24" x 30")
edition of 7 |
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Found Object / Flower / Back
2011
inkjet print
244 x 101.5 cm (96" x 40")
edition of 5 |
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Found Object / Flower / Front
2011
inkjet print
244 x 101.5 cm (96" x 40")
edition of 5 |
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Found Object / Leaf #1
2011
inkjet print
61 x 76.25 cm (24" x 30")
edition of 7 |
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Found Object / Leaf #2
2011
inkjet print
61 x 76.25 cm (24" x 30")
edition of 7 |
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Found Object / Metal
2011
inkjet print
61 x 76.25 cm (24" x 30")
edition of 7 |
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Found Object / Glass
2011
inkjet print
61 x 76.25 cm (24" x 30")
edition of 7 |
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Cabbage Flower #1
2011
inkjet print
127 x 101.5 cm (50" x 40")
edition of 7 |
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Cabbage Flower #2
2011
inkjet print
127 x 101.5 cm (50" x 40")
edition of 7 |
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Shaore Lies on Futon
2011
inkjet print
101.5 x 127 cm (40" x 50")
edition of 7 |
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Blue Bottle
2011
inkjet print
101.5 x 81.5 cm (40" x 32")
edition of 7 |
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Leaf on Wall with Tape
2011
inkjet print
101.5 x 81.5 cm (40" x 32")
edition of 7 |
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Short Sentence #1 / A Bag of 16 Items
2011
inkjet print
101.5 x 81.5 cm (40" x 32")
edition of 7 |
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Half Dried Plant #1
2011
inkjet print
101.5 x 81.5 cm (40" x 32")
edition of 7 |
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Pot and Roots #1
2011
inkjet print
127 x 101.5 cm (50" x 40")
edition of 7 |
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Pot and Roots #2
2011
inkjet print
127 x 101.5 cm (50" x 40")
edition of 7 |
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Yushan Carries Shaore By Lake #1
2011
inkjet print
101.5 x 127 cm (40" x 50")
edition of 7 |
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Yushan Carries Shaore By Lake #2
2011
inkjet print
101.5 x 127 cm (40" x 50")
edition of 7 |
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Kangaroo #1
2011
inkjet print
101.5 x 127 cm (40" x 50")
edition of 7 |
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Zebra #1
2011
inkjet print
101.5 x 127 cm (40" x 50")
edition of 7 |
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Yushan Feeds Shaore on Futon
2011
inkjet print
127 x 101.5 cm (50" x 40")
edition of 7 |
VIDEOS
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The Eyes (Diptych, Left)
2011
HD video
8:00 min (looped)
edition of 5 |
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The Eyes (Diptych, Right) |
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The Leaf
2011
HD video
8:00 min (looped)
edition of 5 |
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The Water
2011
HD video
8:00 min (looped)
edition of 5 |
This work contains three videos made from a still image of Yushan standing by water in her 10th month of pregnancy.
Owing to the obsession of looking for Yushan in an image, one might think of Roland Barthes' search for his mother's true image through photography - I was drawn to Yushan's smile in an image of her standing by the water in her 10th month of pregnancy. I felt like she could barely smile with of the burden of life; that this smile might be her last one. Beginning with that image, I decided to study it and make a work.
First, I wanted to get into the details of her image and the moment so that her figure and the nature around her became barely recognizable. Second, I wanted to feel time - to find a way to free the image from its stillness and extend its uncertainty through the addition of time. I wanted to have a way to see her and search for her, and through the added time she might respond to my gaze.
Technically, after scanning the original negative, I enlarged the image to see the detail. I preserved the hard edge of the pixilation so there is another surface of the image to be seen, and I resampled the image to create sequences of the same still image and to use them as a source to generate movements. The constructed image moves, and somehow detaches from the original image and becomes a moving representation of its own. It becomes a light instrument, and Yushan's body and the moment of her standing by the water feeds the movement.
I see her trembling, and I am glad that the movements of that moment are somehow like an endless music, waving and shaking. Sometimes it refers back to the original moment and her look, but most of the time it is on its own, like a song.
-CCW
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VIEWS OF THE SHOW
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LINKS
Nicolas Mavrikakis. "Aux frontières du visible" Voir (Montreal) 21 April 2011 (in French)
Jérôme Delgado. "Un phrasé empreint d'émotion" Le Devoir (Montreal) 16 April 2011 (in French)
John Pohl. "Signs of life among the dying" The Gazette (Montreal) 2 April 2011
Chih-Chien Wang's page on the PFOAC website
Inventory of other works available by Chih-Chien Wang
Chih-Chien Wang's artist website
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ARTIST'S C.V.
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