‘Imagine you are falling. But there is no ground.’ ── Hito Steyerl ‘In Free Fall: A Thought Experiment on Vertical Thought’
Perception and observation of things come from the flow of relationships between them.
As a sculpture artist, my work is not only preceded by space but relies heavily upon it. However, when an exhibition site transitions from the physical to the digital, space has also changed from the visible/tangible to the invisible/intangible, and the viewer is no longer surrounded by space. The orientation in space - up, down, left, right - also seems unable to be identified in the digital world, depriving us of physical sensations we experience when surrounded by space.
To me, as I enter the digital world, the concept of space becomes abstract, and gravity no longer allows things to exist securely as in space. Instead, everything exists in a state of weightlessness, falling and floating, whilst enlarging, shrinking, overlapping, replicating, juxtaposing and rotating space become possible.
Works in this exhibition are based on the theme ‘Gravity in Space’. By presenting video, photography and sound works in combination, I try to reflect on the concept of 'physical sites’ from my previous works. Through the visible and the invisible, the tangible and the intangible, I hope to explore how the visual, the physical and the spatial would be drawn into each other in a virtual world, so that the weight of perception can manifest itself.
Sean Tseng (b. 1995) holds an MFA from Royal College of Arts and currently lives and works in Taipei, Taiwan. Tseng primarily works in installation and photography. Through the use of a mix of natural and man-made materials, his site-specific installations explore the rhythm and subtleties in landscape, while investigating the relationship between urban and natural landscapes, allowing the viewer to immerse in these spaces that he creates. Tseng has shown in Taiwan, Spain, the UK and China. In 2021, Tseng and Taiwanese artist Sara Wu co-founded the online platform ‘ss space space’, an artist-led experimental space with specific research on space.