Status versus Circumstance: Solo Exhibition of Hwang Yue-Sheng’s Printmaking Art

The original motive of the artist’s creation and inquiry, is an attitude of questioning— questions about life’s surroundings, society’s value system, environmental damage, and the rivalry and the deceit that lie within humanity. Such questions have brought forth the artist’s inner anxiety, and a sense of fear towards the outward realm. The effect of this anxiety and fear eventually results in questioning the existence of oneself, as the content of his works is constantly about a doubtful self—I vs. non-I, the self versus being selfless; I in existence, in absence, being revealed or being concealed.

The application of symbolism and metaphor in his work signifies the artist’s invisibility and absence, being in correspondence to Jean-Paul Sartre’s view, in which nothingness does not suggest nonexistence—it is consciousness itself, and consciousness is remarkably proactive and originative. The quality of nothingness of consciousness mainly suggests that consciousness is always hidden and unrevealed while it has the infinite capacity to deny every being through nullification. The consciousness attains its own authentic existence by nullifying other beings. Constantly, consciousness nullifies the beings apart from itself, and thus demonstrates its powerful vitality. In other words, it is the process in which the artist nullifies the surrounding things, being and existent events apart from himself that manifests the artist’s true essence of existence and the appearance of his true self.

In the thematic exhibition Status versus Circumstance, the artist attempts to put scenes and objects from distinct time and space in parallel, or misplace them into a pastiche. This exhibition brings about an attitude of question through its seemingly real yet fictional wanderings and its inconsistent, conflictual facade and core, hence [its content] fluctuates between the being and the nothingness of Ego. The Ego seemingly exists within the status, and hides during a circumstance. Altogether , Status versus Circumstance is aimed at reflecting a series of pseudomorph of interpersonal relationships—whether it is being intended or unintended.