HUANG TING CHUN　Solo Exhibition “When I See the Darkness

This exhibition is an attempt to explore the state of “Ouyu” through his works. In Chinese, “wuyu” means nothing, but at the same time, it also contains the meaning of “black. In images, language, and structure, some things are always discarded, shielded, and driven out of sight. They are not mere emptiness, but rather, they are possessed with the possibility of being potential entities that have not yet been named, that have not yet emerged. In this exhibition, we use photography, video, and spatial installation to capture these unspoken boundaries and explore the limits of seeing, and how meaning is generated and flows between shielding and manifestation.

When we talk about “omni,” it often evokes the state after death. On a sleepless night, we turn over and over, close our eyes, and stare at the blackness. Or I may lie on my back in the mountains late at night and recall a landscape where the earth, trees, and sky dissolve into blackness. I have tried to capture and describe this elusive blackness. Words, language, painting, or even the shutter of a camera could not fully reproduce it. The “ou-yu” cannot be fully contained in any description or structure. Every time we try to grasp its outline, it recedes again, becoming vague and profound.

It is not merely a shadow created by light. Shadows appear only when there is light, and they depend on the presence of light. But black, on the other hand, is not; rather, it may be a kind of boundary of existence, an unrecognizable foundation. For example, just as the center of the sun emits the strongest light, but inside it lurks a darkness that can never be seen directly. It is like an unreachable blank land, where all meaning is suspended in absence. Like a photograph, the edges of the image are cut away through the lens, and selected portions are taken into the structure. On the other hand, the part left behind dwells in the blackness cut out by the lens.

This exhibition attempts to visualize these cut-off and overlooked boundaries through video installations and photographic works. Black is not only outside the screen, but drifts through the images as an “absent presence. Black is the absence of visual experience, and at the same time, it is the condition that makes seeing itself possible. In the image, as well as in the events and structures of reality, black is always there - as proof of absence, as the basis of all manifestation. The same is true of our consciousness; when we think we understand something, there is always another realm outside of consciousness that follows. Our existence is supported by some structural void that allows us to see, but never fully capture.

The “omnipresent” is not mere nothingness, nor is it mere blackness. It is a field yet to be visited, yet to be named. It is the accumulation of all that has not been seen, all that has not been said, and at the same time it is the origin of all creation. Perhaps this is why Goethe wrote in “Faust”: “I want to find everything in your emptiness” (Im Nichts hoff' ich das All zu finden.). And this exhibition is precisely an attempt to look at this “Oyu”.