“Keep production as a mirror
Keep death as an exchange
Keep the world as a simulacrum”
--Jean Baudrillard

*保持生产作为一种镜像,保持死亡作为一种交换,保持世界作为一种幻象。

陈萧伊过往的作品中,一直将图像当作隐喻的媒介,以自然作为中间介质,探讨面对精神性的直观体验。在“KOAN”(2013-2015)系列中, 她采用照相凹版术,选取抽象的风景制成版画,通过简化与抽象的手段探索表面之下事物的真实以及隐藏的法则。之后的“隐匿时”(2015- 2016)系列则是将世界的细微用抽象的影像再现,模糊了宏观和微观在尺度上的界限,试图推翻观者对真实的体验。长期以来对于实相与虚相的探讨,为她映射出了一个镜像结构——在“洞穴”内外自由穿梭,对于自身的存在而言并没有本质的区别。于是,经由原初的现象对不可揭示之物进行了最直接的揭示,存在把自身显现为空无,构成了那永无法逾越的透明的障碍物。

在个人项目“Never!”中,陈萧伊仍旧在日常之中捕捉一种光天化日之下的神秘,把对图像平面性的观看延展为另一种更为多样的感知体验。在对日常与时间断裂的体验之中,切入自认为的真实并将此作为机会与可能,为自己制造“洞穴”。在这次的尝试中,她以自身得不到解答的屏障/界限为中点,在两个空间之间来往以试图达成某一种的共时结构, 以在面对这所知甚少的屏障物时,获取一种溢出性的感知。到这里,作品并非再去对真实与虚幻进行边界的模糊,而是去无法揣度的虚空里抓住一声回响,在这永无终极、永不定位的结构与框架中持续地,无休止地复现与撞击。

Using pictures as media of metaphor, nature as intermedium, Chen’s past works discuss about the spiritual initiative experience. In “KOAN” (2013— 2015) series, she usedphotogravure and selected abstract landscape to make prints, and to explore the hidden reality and rules in a simplifying and abstract way. The series “An Infinitesimal Wink” (2015—2016) reproduced the image of subtle details of the world, confused the boundary between the macro and the micro concept, to overturn viewer’s experience of reality. The probe into the real and virtual image has mapped an enantiomorph for her— even though the contradictory perceptual experience freely travels in and out of the ‘cave’, it remains the same in essence. Consequently, the original phenomenon reveals things that cannot be revealed in the most direct way: existence appears to be nothingness, which constitutes an insurmountable transparent barrier.

In this project, Chen Xiaoyi is still capturing a daily mystery in broad daylight. She extends the flatness viewing of pictures into more various perceptions. Experiencing the rupture of time and daily life, Chen cuts into her own reality as the opportunity and possibility to create a cave for herself. Standing on the middle point of the unsolved barrier, she attempts to reach a synchronic structure between two spaces, in order to gain a little overflowing perception from it. Till now, her art works are no longer to confuse the distinction between reality and illusion, but to catch an echo that constantly strikes and recurs in the never-ending and non-positioning structure from the unknown void.

CHEN XIAOYI