The Familiar Temperature - MIT

作品賞析

Hsieh I-Chen has always used traditional Taiwanese street food as a main subject in his artwork. The noodles in the painting were one kind of food he often ate in Taiwan’s south when he was young—fried noodles were cheap and very filling. When he grew up, he discovered that the noodles in northern and southern Taiwan looked different, so the noodles depicted here symbolize his childhood memories. Besides conveying his nostalgia for a certain food, he also uses the image of these noodle packages stacked on a table to imply the kind of economic behavior that surrounds the exchange of money for food.Hsieh layers the oil paint to bring out the varying transparent, translucent, and opaque appearance of the food and the plastic packaging, and the tabletop reflection. The noodles look full, light, and fresh. As with many paintings done in the hyperrealistic style, the artist uses a plain black background to further highlight the vividness of the noodles and bring viewers’ focus on the main subject itself, so they can contemplate it, search their own nostalgic memories of food, and ask about its economic significance.