Round Around

作品賞析

In the artist Hsiao Tung’s Round Around, spacecraft are heading for unknown places in the universe, eerie constellations, drawn as if on a planisphere, glow in the darkness of space, and buildings as they might be imagined in science fiction are clustered in dense settlements. What does this small, self-operating universe represent? We wonder. Hsiao Tung never starts with a draft—he directly records what he sees every day on sheets of blank paper, and the movements traced by his pigment liner pen are a kind of writing. One day he might walk down an alley and see a certain building, and these everyday things are transformed into abstract symbols and signs, which gradually appear on the paper. He creates monochromatic copper engravings, with black the only color. By eliminating the interference of color, vision is returned to a state of pure simplicity. For Hsiao Tung, round structures symbolize a kind of emptying, a natural return to original position in all the rhythmic movement. They echo his free and unrestrained creative methods, and each awakened symbol or sign embarks on a new life in a beautiful world.