Artwork Appreciation
The artist Hsiao Ya Hsin is fascinated by the geometric structure of spider webs, especially after a rainfall, when the raindrops on the spider silk make spider webs hidden among leaves shining in the air. In her work Moment I, she attempts to reproduce the light-and-shadow changes of spider webs after being soaked by rain. The blue-green block that occupies three-fourths of the painting looks as if were made with parallel brush strokes, but in fact, for each of the “silk threads” she was holding an iron ruler with oil paint on it, and then she pressed it on the canvas, so that the threads will refract light. The white triangular shapes here and there represent spider webs. The paint adhering to the ruler is either dense or thin, with a slight hint of the background color, which also makes the painting full of unpredictable variability. She reduces day, night, sun, moon, stars, and the changes throughout the day into minimalist geometric color blocks in the upper quarter of the painting, and it implies that she is looking up at the sky through a forest canopy.