Night Up

作品賞析

Lee Yi-Hsuan carefully observes the environment where she grew up. Her work, Night Up, takes the plant known as giant elephant ear (Alocasia odora) as its subject-matter, because it often grows in rural areas and is a very tenacious plant. Lee divides the composition into several sections. The giant elephant ear at the center of the picture has stems and leaves stretching out in all directions; it is presented in a more three-dimensional manner. However, in the lower or front section, it is depicted more flatly, with the leaves made up of different color blocks. In the back (or top), several spheres of various sizes can be seen. They are both moon and sun, since this is a space where night and day are juxtaposed. By this kind of compositional arrangement, Lee is presenting the giant elephant ear as it appears in different ways in time and space. These seemingly placid, silent plants actually have a tenacious vitality. Through the vicissitudes of time, it is the unending cycle of life evolving in nature that exists.