“To represent history” is perhaps a privilege unique to this era. On the one hand, the title evokes an image of us waving at history, welcoming it cautiously as it comes into contact with us again; on the other, the title that is a double entendre also bids farewell to history, expecting to part ways with it. The underlying paradox in the title not only reveals the ambivalence of language but also points out that the reality of history does indeed harbor these two diverging paths. The only way to decide what the two positions truly mean to people is contingent upon us the viewers, in our observation and imagining of the past and the future, as we embark upon the journey from the here and now.

In the realm of artistic creation, many other artists have been considering a similar question: at the crossroads of history, where will we position ourselves, or be positioned? Working at the ending point of history, or perhaps temporarily suspending history altogether, Cai Zhisong constructs an observation deck on which to consider the above question via a series of artworks. He brings together references of works and cultural discourses from different times, allowing them to clash and interact, so that those of us experiencing his creation may begin a long conversation with it. The process of the encounter is full of mystery, as though trying to solve a beautiful, flourishing puzzle.

As a classically trained sculptor, Cai marries his idiosyncratic style to a complex postmodernist vocabulary with the intention of reflecting upon and emphasizing a cultural subject matter: amongst the different aesthetics of the past and the present, of the east and the west, who is in the lead? And who is following behind? From the artist’s solo exhibition at MOCA, Taipei, it is not difficult to see various elements in dialogue and dialectical contexts. Aside from revealing the artist’s ambitious attempt to go a few rounds with history itself, the exhibition also re-focuses our attention towards artistic discussions about subjective thinking and linguistic construct.

*image (left)
Lying Rose, 2003
cast stainless steel, 250x250x800cm
© Cai Zhisong
courtesy of MOCA Taipei