I Am Nothing and Everything

An experience is not inaccessible. Lost in the deliberate labyrinth unbridledly, or two adjacent waves co-devouring symbiotically, it is the incessant approaching to torment and ecstasy. All that is the moment when I am gazing at myself, the extreme proximity between the subject and the object. Concomitant with this recess and bracket, I am dismembered, mingling into the objects. Thus, images, words and perception slip in suspension with no subject to rest on. This is a moment of estrangement within which the inner experience is undulating, solitarily. It is an absolute depletion of the present. I am dissipated, which conceals the opportunity to retrieve the purity. When consciousness starts spreading, words spinning, the centre is omnipresent.

WU SPACE is pleased to present I Am Nothing and Everything, a group exhibition including Sun Wenguan, Wu Guang Yu and Zhao Duan. This exhibition aims to revisit the subjectivity and investigate the suspension of subject not as a resistance or self-negating squarely, but rather a channel to explore more possibilities to understand the world and the attendant experiences.

The title I Am Nothing and Everything is inclined to circumvent the incongruity of literal translation from Chinese version in which the emphasis on eye is explosive for the debate on vision primacy. Indeed, the Western philosophy has long valued the sight as the our main source. As Plato states in Timaeus, “of the organs they [Gods] constructed first light- bearing eyes ... if our eyes had never seen the sun, stars, and heavens, the words which we have spoken would not have been uttered.” Ever since Plato, the philosophy has tried to see, the image is often confused with the concept of truth in thinking. In company with the development of modern mass media and the advent of Baudrillard’s consumer society, sight is generally considered as the primary empirical sense and also features the modern society. The sprawling images and people’s pursuing of visual experiences frenziedly spark a wave of criticism on ocular primacy.

Stripped off the embedded rational or irrational perception, looking is merely an action with sight directing from the subject. It presupposes an object world as a totality for subjectivity. As Nietzsche states, “Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster ... for when you gaze long into the abyss. The abyss gazes also into you.” Additional to the basic reflection, looking at self engenders a circulation of infinite mutual gazing within which the subjectivity is blurred, dismembered and mingling into the objects. It is the approaching to the extreme proximity between subject and object.

In artist Zhao Duan’s work Combine de ... no.3, body’s negative space is revealed subtly. More precisely, it is the symbiosis of air, scrolls and skin. The body, along with its inner space is explored and deconstructed. To terminate in eternality or collapse is no longer important at this moment. The co-existence in every frame is where the experience permeates. The video Dossier is recorded at nursing home Arthur Groussier. The artist embraced the elderly who is sitting on a stool. Due to the feeble body, the elderly slightly leaned on the artist who is acting as the back. The camera starts recording one minute from here. Two co-leaning bodies filled all the forms and content as a chair and transcended far beyond the border of subjectivity. The experience expanded and flowed to the object world. Thus, images, words and perception slip in suspension with no subject to rest on. This estrangement also appears in artist Wu Guang Yu’s mixed media installation, The elephant in my backyard. When the boundary between subject and object is blurring, purpose is not necessary any more. What is undulating is solely inner tranquility to experience the depletion of present. When the subject is reset, its relationship with the object world is redefined accordingly. The response of the water, an immersive installation by artist Sun Wenguan, challenges the human centralism. The humanity, as Bataille states, origins from negating the nature. It negates both the nature of animality from the inside and nature of earth from the outside. The pure I had already disappeared when human differentiated themselves from nature. In the history of resisting and controlling the nature, human unfold the history of language, rationality, etc. Various dualities are established, rationality and sensibility, inner and outside, subject and object. When I am dissipated, it probably conceals the opportunity to retrieve the purity. The centre disappears, or centre is omnipresent.