size variable, Laser print on paper, felt, linen, pre-primed canvas, stretched canvas, dismantled crate, used carboard box, lumber-core plywood, coloured silver leaf and household paint on manipulated found-timber, pencil and collage on paper, spray paint on lumber core plywood, Curing tape, masking tape, fragmented used disposable-palette
installation view, Motionless Boundary | "Visions of Stillness" Art from Japan, Singapore and Taiwan (group show), 2018 at DaXin Art Museum, Tainan, Taiwan. Curated by Sze Yang BOO & I Ling HSIAO
photo: Kiyohito Mikami
This work repurposes a simple crate previously used for shipping the artwork, together with the reinforced cardboard lining inside it, unfolding these materials and reassigning them as the pictorial / bodily support of the work. During its presentation at DaXin Art Museum in Taiwan, smaller components were likewise transported stored within the crate and later unfolded and installed across the wall.
Here, the outer shell that once functioned as a crate is treated as a body that holds and carries images and marks. Collages of printed matter and painterly gestures are applied to its surface in a manner that deliberately echoes the format of shipping labels—such as those affixed to parcels during transport. These collaged elements operate in parallel with the actual labels that were once attached to the crate, bearing information such as addresses, senders, and destinations. In this way, the surface becomes a site where the logistical identity of the artwork—its circulation, routing, and handling as an object—intersects with pictorial and material gestures.
Through this process, the roles that lie between the artwork’s physical journey and its “attire,” and between surface and body, are dissolved. What once served as an external armour protecting the work during transport gradually becomes the body of the work itself, while elements that had been contained within are unfolded and dispersed across the wall like an exploded diagram.
The masking tape marks left on the wall record the traces of each component as it moved in search of its appropriate position. These marks preserve the trajectory of that movement, allowing the process of installation to remain visible as an afterimage.