Gallery 100 is delighted to announce "Kuo Pu", the second solo exhibition by artist Shi Jing in Taipei. Through the interplay of light and brushstrokes Shi Jin infuses his works with memories and images, a continuation of his exploration into the interrelationship of meanings, subject matter and existential essence in painting. The central theme of the current exhibition can be traced back to fragments of historical memories, in as much as the flow of time shaped by people, events and objects create a construct through which we all understand and imagine in the past.

"Kuo Pu" refers to distinctively tasting pieces of fruit that are stripped of peel, processed and preserved. Shi Jing uses this concept to highlight the outcomes of the cause and effect relationships between real world objects. Interwoven between the blank spaces on the white canvas, what the images alluding to is stripped of relationships imposed by historical context, which prevents objective antecedents from becoming part of the motif. However, the role played by memory and history as one views and judges an object invariably includes the consciousness of the viewer. In contrast, somewhere in between the process of re-presentation and disappearance a new understanding takes shape. At the same time, this also ensures that the images painted are far detached from their meaning in the real world. Shi Jin uses the works displayed in this exhibition to convey the constant flux in worldly beliefs over time, in the same way that the flavor preserved in processed fruit for so many years is not the original flavor. This symbolizes the never-ending cycle of life as represented in Buddhism by the four stages of “formation, existence, decay and nothingness.”

Courtesy of Gallery 100