HUANG,SHENG-MING

I am a traveler. I use an ultra-self-oriented way to wander the streets and have dialogue with the space. Over my thirty years doing this, time passes and space changes. What remains the same is that I use lenses to reach the world, and I look at everything through the camera. Very often, while the lens is focused externally, I reflected inwardly. When the shutter is flashed/pressed/on, it races with unending time for 1/125 second. It seems as if I try to a find lost part of myself from somewhere in the world.

 

For me, filming is like creating a painting. Geometrical pattern has to come prior to a narrative. It has been my belief that a piece of creation has to have both form and content.  I want to provide imagination and visual impact for things of this secular world through filming. So I transform the image through poetic-style observation. This approach enriches my mind. In the process therefore I produce a narrative to record my own experience through capture of images.

 

The pictures of this exhibition sit between the real and the non-representational. Some of images were captured at right time by chance, turning moments into eternity. Some were the result of long-waiting: for ideal or desired light, people, locations. Waiting is a mindful practice. No matter it is an instant, or a long wait, it is instinct which determines whether to take the shot or not. An instinct called forth by the setting.

 

The works capture unplanned moments and planned waiting in many corners of Taiwan; the interesting scenes of the lobby of the Marina Bay Sands hotel in Singapore; a performance by the Golden Gate of the Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco; the romantic atmosphere when strolling on the street in Paris; net-like electric lines hanging above the streets of Neizu in Tokyo; and … Every photo, every work is a trip, a past, a memory. When selecting those works, it felt as if I was putting together the jigsaw of memory. All the good parts of travels revealed themselves again vividly.

 

Images are floating on the ocean of meaning; they were ever frozen in one corner. Roland Barthes said captions for images or this kind of text are like throwing an anchor into the sea, it stops the waves and tide of thought/mind/imagination, but fix the idea in one corner. What did I capture through my camera? Let the works speak for themselves. So I won’t provide any individual captions. What do you see? We shall leave the observers to decide for themselves, freely; though I hope there will be some sparks. This could be an experiment, a game, or a test.

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