Back Gard: step aside

作品賞析

Flowers and airplanes are key elements in artist Chi Chien’s “Back Yard” series. The juxtaposition of flowers, symbolizing femininity and the origin of life, and fighter planes, symbolizing violence and the end of life, creates a sense of binary opposition. The floral fabric is stretched across a frame and layered with paint, leaving only the floral image on the fabric. The shape of the aircraft is inspired by a photograph taken by a war correspondent during World War II, and Chi Chien cuts the outline of the fighter plane out of metal. A warplane, bearing the weight of history, “flies” into the back yard through the attraction of magnets behind the canvas, breaking the confines of painting. The metallic aircraft is “truly sucked into” the picture, thus subverting our visual logic. The flowers in the foreground actually come from the bottom layer of fabric; the fighter jets in the distance are actually located on the top layer. The “Back Yard” series presents a brilliant dialectic of the counterpoint between the layers of painting.