Artwork Appreciation
The artist Chen Cheng-Wei centers his “Reflections of Time” series on the theme of the “old, abandoned theaters in Taiwan.” For him, “theater” is really a concentrated field that retains many people’s memories. Complete strangers can always share moments of life by watching movies together in a theater. Chen’s Reflections of Time—2 shows images that he shot of the “Golden Sands” theater when he traveled to Kinmen. Chen Cheng-Wei customarily lets himself enter the scene first, and he starts shooting the photos only after he feels stories emerge in his heart from the abandoned spaces, old objects, stains, dust, light, and shadow. Chen lowers the tone of his pictures to express a sense of waste and uses dark corners to draw the focus on nine key themes. The images are textured and layered, full of the traces of past stories.