During my summer residency at Glenfiddich Distillery, I often bought issues of Beano, a weekly comic publication. Flipping through its pages one time, I discovered that an exhibition celebrating the comic’s 75th anniversary was being held at Southbank Centre in London. I decided to visit and learn more about this historic comic. Later on, Andy Fairgrieve, the person in charge of the residency program, arranged for me to visit D.C Thomson, the publishing house for Beano located in the city of Dundee. Going over almost a century of history in D.C Thomson’s archives, I witnessed the evolution of the comic’s color palette over the past 75 years. The experience was akin to watching history come to life. And, this piece of living history alluded to a message conveyed across generations through a process of evolution.

Furthermore, in discussions with Andy about Beano’s evolution and its historic significance for Scottish publishing, I discovered comics that were unlike the material I had previously used to create the Function Color series. Comics serve as a material of mass media. Their readable and static images lead viewers to the formation of visual memories. This discovery inspired me to begin collecting antique Beano comics. Through textured and tangible artworks, I wanted to explore the message behind the evolution of color palettes used to design the characters of Beano. After discussing the works with visiting artist, Chi-Tsung Wu, we jointly developed a rapidly rotating device that makes images of comic characters appear to be concentric layers of colors. On one end, the device creates a type of rotatory portrait across the surface of speed. On another end, its motions reveal a process of abstractification. For this work, I chose the classic characters featured in Beano over the past 75 years to allow the resulting rotatory portraits reveal the evolution of the comic’s colors over the years. This serves as a way to evoke the memories of its readers across many generations.

In short, Suspending on the Surface of Speed depicts a rapidly rotating motion that forces colors to reveal a message conveyed across history. This message no longer just comes from signs that linger across our retinas. Instead, it is a body searching for messages along the surface of speed that transcend space and time. It is a chemical reaction produced by a series of chance encounters with people and objects during the residency period. It is also a path that is opened along a process of temporal displacement for the creative context of the Function Color series.
- Agi Chen

*image (left)
© Agi Chen
courtesy of the artist and IT Park Gallery & Photo Studio