Artwork Appreciation
The artist Hou Chung-Ying was inspired by the imagery of the pill in The Matrix and transformed realistic images of human fingers into such a pill, while in the background he used the image of a Middle Eastern-style tile pattern, thus creating a sense of religious ceremony. In this work, The Pill of Vision 03, the artist carefully depicted a pair of thumbs, one yellow and one green, spliced together into a pill shape. When viewed through a filter, a three-dimensional visual effect is achieved. The highly realistic skin texture of the thumbs and the complex background makes the viewer lost between reality and illusion. On the one hand, the work presents the idea that “drugs and information overload have influenced human physical and cultural development,” but at the same time, it gives the viewer a psychedelic viewing experience. The capsule type of pill is a product of modern medicine that delivers a drug quickly and efficiently, but the image implies also that “drugs control our minds” and that the people of today are controlled by a pair of invisible hands.