Whisper -Fish Afraid of Water

作品賞析

The works of artist Hsu Jo-Chun often break with the original forms of natural scenery. She gets rid of specific images but leaves the lines, and use the properties of Oriental media to switch virtual and real, in order to present scenery with hallucinatory feeling.When she was an artist-in-residence in a seaside village, she tried getting close to the sea, though she was afraid of water. The various struggles and anxieties that she went through led her to create this work. The paper used for Whisper—A Fish Afraid of Water was made by adding water to old drafts on paper and turning it into paper pulp, which she then laid out on a wooden board. The wrinkled, uneven thickness of the paper simulates the accumulation of age. Hsu Jo-Chun transforms the shape of human cells into white wavy lines in the painting, and the thin, densely intertwined strips are like the network of human neurons. She uses this image as a metaphor for people’s need to confront their inner fears and gradually overcome them, in order to convert those fears into the strength to move ahead.