The “Yet to Come”, Surface Tension and Truth in Painting in the 2023 “Future of the Future”

Written by / Art Critic: Hu Zhongyin

Artists: Liao Zhenping, Lin Xianjun, Zeng Yongning, Gao Yating, Huang Wanling, Lin Guanming, Xie Muqi

“For all artists, art is always the surprise of ‘being’ yet ‘becoming possible’, a surprise that must start from the extreme. Art belongs to the end of the world and can only start from where no art can be generated.”
— Maurice Blanchot, “Le Livre à Venir”

Surface Tension and Technical Coldness Imagine a scenario: when artists understand the changes in the events and stillness within the societal field, they always see a kind of “indirect” visual manifestation. In other words, an event happens in everyday life that relates to me, but doesn’t make me particularly concerned, a strange feeling. Its occurrence is recognized post facto, amidst a sense of numbness and delayed awareness. For example, the fleeting impressions of the landscape from a high-speed train, walking into the mountains and recalling familiar historical memories, returning to hometown to see familiar scenes of youth life, which due to repairs and renovations, no longer look the same as in memory.

This ‘indirect’ is a déjà vu of sensibility, a perceptual variation produced by time delay, a vision that does not appeal to the eye. On one hand, it brings the detached feeling of a third-person perspective, and on the other hand, it makes the ‘expression’ of art creation particularly paradoxical and intriguing.

Then, when viewing returns to the eyes, the daily touched landscapes or object symbols, when they sketch them – the sketch of the eyes, the final image/picture needs to manifest itself, but it seems to slip along the contours of space and objects.

The “tension and depth of flat creation,” “indirect viewing mode and thinking,” and “technical coldness” can be said to be the three threads drawn from the common characteristics of all the artists of the Future Society.

In past art critics’ research on the ‘Future Society’, they unanimously pointed out that ‘flat’ or ‘planar’ artistic creation exploration is their common concern and new core proposition. In contemporary art, the ‘plane’ has not yet been exhausted and still has great potential, whether it is the interface of flat painting or image, new meanings can be generated through different viewing logic and construction paths.

For the ‘plane’ of Future Society’s creation, from the outside: the generation of visual images, line and color structure, layering and texture, image reversal, and self-mapping. Or from the ‘inside’ of the plane: production logic, materiality, the conceptuality/traces/temporality within the image, or how the artist, facing this ‘interface’ of painting and image, places self, viewing consciousness and time difference sensation within it, where to place it?

‘On the plane’ and ‘inside the plane’, between the visual and non-visual elements, through delayed viewing and repeated viewing while perceiving the differences in each view, leaving the “rewritten” traces on the plane, further embodies the special charm and surface tension generated by the ‘layering’ and ‘internal and external differences’ of the works of the Future Society artists.

“Différance”, “To Come”, “Perception of Painterliness” and “The Truth of Painting”

In terms of the philosophy of deconstruction by Jacques Derrida, “deconstruction is always future-oriented, an opening to the unknown and to more possibilities”. And deconstruction is always “to come” (à venir / l’avenir / English: to come) with no end in sight, facing what is yet to come but is about to come, always restarting and constantly delaying the birth of deconstruction.

What is the future spirit of the “Future Society”? We can imagine that for the Future Society, it is not about expressing a standard answer or rigid definition for the artists and creators in the group to face their “future” imaginations. The concept of “différance” in deconstruction thought is essential when understanding the “future spirit” of Future Society. It expresses that in the process of observing and recognizing things, “slow down” is a crucial state of art perception. Slowing down is an important opportunity for self to re-recognize the essence of creation. Watch slower, understand slower, speak slower, “différance” is both delay and difference.

In the paintings of Xie Muqi, what do “creation” and “not painting” mean? How can we reinterpret the “bedding” or “geology” of paintings that originate from the material base? What about images and paintings waiting for the future?

Looking at Gao Yating’s work, who juxtaposes classical landscape paintings with Taiwanese landscapes like Mount Jade, she integrates her personal experience of traveling in Taiwan’s mountains and geothermal areas. By “re-writing” the images and considering how the so-called classic images and codes can be reinterpreted in contemporary contexts, she creates new understandings.

Zeng Yongning uses small flowers and cell-like units as the basic pattern for his two-dimensional plane images. The development direction of these works has been focused on issues such as penetration, volume, landscape reconstruction, site, and growth position in recent years, which has led to a new understanding of the inner landscape of his paintings.

Huang Wanling uses 360-degree panoramic photography to complete negative film collision ink painting. She has exhibited several new works on the theme of Taiwan’s landscape. She discusses the pattern of viewing under the window of technology, corresponding to the direct observation of nature travel, the visual impact, changes, and the ordinary scenes of daily viewing.

Can you touch your painting? Can you touch the core of the image?
How is an approach possible? The Future Society creates through an “indirect” visual manifestation. The “painterliness” in understanding the creations of the Future Society is also recognized as an “atypical painterliness” with a difference in interiority.

“The truth in painting means and can be understood as: the truth is displayed, expressed or represented in the specific field of image speech, unique to painting, even if this way is metaphorical in terms of truth itself.” Jacques Derrida, “The Truth in Painting”.

“For the Future Society, the ‘future’ is the difference in the ‘multi-view’ and ‘multi-manifestation’ of artistic creation placed in the factor of temporal flow.”