Yiou Wang's Gallery
The Calcified World.
In some million years, when the world's lives are reduced to bare bones and shells, a giant vertebrae of some extinct animal serves as a bridge across the two cliffs -- seafloor corals on the left and seashells on the right. The calcified world symbolizes a world of lives stripped to its bare core, where the magnificence of the architecture of animal skeletons is overwhelming.
A Sketch of the Menglingmane Huts in Yunnan Province, China.
Ring-tailed Lemurs 1+2.
The Underground Palace.
One gets lost in the imaginary underground palace; one drifts down the serene river as if flowing down Hades' River of Oblivion, surprised when he encounters the unknown sphere lying in the middle of a clearing. The nameless sphere with seashells symbolizes all that can't be comprehended.
Totally enthralled by the idea, I spent 4 hours drawing and three weeks refining it. Strange that I felt it was unfinished until the moment the raven was added in the corner.
Impossible Stairs.
The image of the mysterious sphere floating in the river of the previous work, The Underground Palace, originated from a dream. Here is its model.
Now I've come to the microscopic inner space of each seashell on the mysterious object. The seashell has the natural aesthetic quality of architecture. I built spiral stairs inside. The stairs alternate between clockwise and counterclockwise. Escher's false space inspired my idea of the impossible spatial relationship between the stairs and the seashell.
Winter Sketch of the Old Siheyuan* Beside My Home.
Near my home there is an area of old siheyuan*, yards, and alleys where now still a few people inhabit. In winter I used to wander off to explore in the nearest Siheyuan, climbing on the pile of miscellaneous abandoned objects—deserted furniture and other human traces, watching the old, ramshackle houses where I was nervous to intrude, thinking that the houses might be private spaces. But logically, these houses had long been emptied.
In those post-snow afternoons after I cycled home from school, I'd drop by the old courtyard if I felt like doing so, and traced cats' footprints on the snow.
*siheyuan: a traditional Chinese form of residence consisting of four rows of houses with a courtyard in the middle; a landmark of Beijing.
A Tree Sketch.
Untitled.
The mirror has two symbolic meanings here. First, the old stairway is only one simple space with one vanishing point, but the addition of the mirror suddenly provides a second space, making the scene as a whole a complex space. Second, notice the water running on the platform and onto some steps. It flows out from the mirror? Or is reflected by the mirror? No one can tell. This piece of drawing explores the subtlety of senses and the mystical quality of the mirror.
The Mirror That Reverts Time.
On the right side, the hallway is reflected through the Mirror That Reverts Time. Many mirrors revert left and right, with others remaining the same; only one mirror reverts time. Time is walking in an invisible cloak. He walks the other way in the mirror's reflection. You can't see him.
The wall in reality is Present, weather-worn and scribbled upon; the wall juxtaposed in the Mirror is Past, clean, intact, and young. On the Present words and non-words are debris of people's minds that left permanent marks on it. Note that no one is simply a passer-by. You can intentionally scribble on the wall, or even if you don't scribble, you unintentionally leave pieces of your mind on it. Not one single person is just a passer-by. Yes. That is what makes Present old as it is—the weight of pieces of minds left by people passing it. You can see him.
The hanging painting is the way I pay my tribute to Joan Miró. I fabricated a sculpture in his style. I'd thank him for being on my mind so permanently, so consistently that he was a debris of my mind I left intuitively on this piece of work. I'd also thank Stephen King and Perkins Library for the same reason because they are the content of the scribbles on the wall called Present. But of course, these are just minor anecdotes not so relevant to the theme of the artwork.
Spring Drowsiness, Autumn Fatigue, Summer Naps and Winter Hibernation.
What Is Poetry.
Following the Predecessor.
You have followed the trail footprints up the stairs in the house, up the chimney, and onto the roof. Then you look up and stop walking. A chill runs over you. You stop walking because you suddenly realize that the person you are following has disappeared at the edge of the roof. You start wondering about the unnaturally interrupted footprints: has he or she jumped off in a suicidal attempt? ... Would I find a dead body below should I go over to the edge? What if I can't? The snow is fresh, so if there isn't abnormalcy below the house, the logical interpretation would be that the person retreated backward in his or her previous footprints. For what motivation? ...
How come it turns out, eventually, after you painstakingly followed the footprints all the way and, as if by an obsessive-compulsive disorder, fitted your own into the predecessor's, that the whoever you are following has gone on a path of no return? But wait... you realize that you are not the only one facing this strange phenomenon. Almost every human, you, me, and they, has followed the foorprints of a predecessor in some point of the life and later found out that it is going nowhere. You fall into deep, philosophical thoughts about the abnormalcy.
This piece intends to present the tense contradiction between the absence of the essence and the anticipation of the reappearance.
Sketch.
Forest.
The Homecoming. (*Work in Progress)
Every individual exist in this world in some form of solitude, walking somewhere on earth; when one ages, one gradually walks toward the River and then, with grace and peace, one merges into the River, painlessly losing one's individual being. This is known as the Homecoming. The River is located in the desolate mountains in the far North and it always points to the orange giant star, Aldebaran. On clear nights in the North, when the Aurora Borealis illuminates the sky, it is the mass's Homecoming that must be occurring. It is intriguing that the River embodies life, and some sort of perpetual mystery, but nowhere does it contain death. We mortals, who cannot escape the eventual fate of being erased from the earth, in physical existence or in memories, may rejoice in this divinely elegance.