The Black Sun—Poyen WANG solo exhibition

The sunlight outside of the windows falls down like a waterfall, while inside is shaded and quiet like a stone room in a cave. The ray of sun breaks in through a slit between curtains, almost like a rope, that can be used to recognize the things in the darkness. A black sun suspends in the sky. Such a black sun is not caused by an eclipse; instead, it exists the way it is like a deep black hole that also shines outwardly.

The Black Sun consists of a series of still and moving images made with 3D computer graphics. In the computer software, metal, plastic, wood and all kinds of natural and artificial materials are simulated in a way that mimics reality: the Index of Refraction of glass is 1.5, and of water is 1.33. Light and shadows, gravity and wind, natural phenomena are also governed by the law of physics. And Time is 24 frames a second. In this heterogeneous universe, even a black sun can illuminate the darkness. The vulnerability, anxiety and fear inside the deepest heart can be revealed and processed. As for the body, which is a platform for all sorts of sentiments in the physical world, here it is more like a metaphor, an avatar or an archetype, for the emotions to cling on or project onto. It is like the protagonist from Motojiro Kajii’s literature, the one who tells the story and the one in the story are the faces of the same person. The person in the story who holds a lemon symbolizing a grenade destroys a bookstore, which saves the person who tells the story in reality.

After moving back to Taiwan from the United States where I lived for three years, the cultural, psychological and physical rupture of being in a foreign place doesn’t recede, but grows and becomes even more obvious. As a result, I am able to remain a certain distance from the outside world, and gradually find a log to hold onto in a sea of meanings. Utilizing the duality in Motojiro Kajii’s literature as a framework, and further collecting vignettes from cinema, literature and art history, I blend them with my own lived experience to construct various tableaux. The ambiguous narrative in The Black Sun is both universal and personal; fictional and authentic; intimate and detached.