Bear Hole

Titled “bear hole”, the first exhibition within the project draws its inspiration from Canadian indigenous oral narratives and the live experiences of the two participating artists, TING Chaong-Wen and WANG Hsiang-Lin, aiming to examine the creative burnout in art production and the state of physical and mental exhaustion in the wake of the milieus of homogenization of time, linear development and capital growth as a whole. By rethinking and resetting the notion of one-dimensional time perspective, the exhibition presents alternative flows, scales, and forms of life that initiate a more dialogic relationship, thus allowing ways of worldmaking to become more sustainable and creative.

The artworks on show bring into focus TING’s and WANG’s experiences of short breaks, returns, dreams and road trips as sources of creative inspiration for them. The barren and solitude landscape scenes in their works act as portals to other worlds. In moments of retrospection, monologues, and getting lost in unconscious dialogues with the “good-for-nothing” frontiers, one no longer perceives time as linear when being present in nature and witnessing its intersectionalities of accumulation and being recycled back into the environment, which render one’s vision and sensation sharper. Hence, the field of seeming emptiness is where the materials speak their languages; and where the body and mind settle.