Pure and Remote View of Stream and Mountains

作品賞析

The title for this painting, Pure and Remote View of Stream and Mountains, is the same as a great classic of Chinese landscape painting by Xia Gui of the Southern Song dynasty. Ting-Tong Chang borrowed the very elegant title because of Xia Gui’s use of mutually generating blank and solid spaces. On this basis, Chang developed a new approach to rendering the atmosphere when explaining the increasingly serious issue of air pollution in modern times. The media used in this work comes from suspended particles in the air taken at different locations in Taipei City. In cooperation with National Taiwan University’s Institute of Environmental Health, Ting-Tong Chang used the suspended particles sampled in the laboratory to formulate inks of different thickness, based on the relative air pollution level. He then used this special “air pollution ink” and his imagination to draw a new, distinctively modern landscape. This process of converting things—from air pollution to ink, from the human body to paintings—also highlights the interactions among individuals, the environment, and society.