GI @Fu: A Solo Exhibition by TSAI SHANG-FU
Text by LIN YU-CHIN
The convenience of the Internet has led to the accelerated communication of various information and cultures. Naturally, the emergence of Internet memes has, too, opened up rearrangements of cultural contexts, transforming the contemporary reading experience into contextual retreats and leaping conceptions. This perceptual logic has become a distinctive gesture in the growth of a new culture.
TSAI SHANG-FU’s solo exhibition, GI @Fu, plays with the homophonous misunderstanding of language and its symbols, with its exhibition title adopting the English acronym of the old computer graphics format GIF. The signifier and signified point to a flow of multiple references, rearranging and reconstructing the order of meanings at present. TSAI’s work provides a way of reading outside the rational framework, which involves the visual choreography of dynamic simulation—point of view, scenario, and reimagination. In a cunning/slipping (a term of Chinese homophone) manner, the artist pulls out a layer of dimension, redefining the relationship between symbols and cognition.
The continual misunderstanding has replaced the original Graphics Interchange Format with Generalization Illusion Formation. TSAI SHANG-FU places the new meaning built by the misunderstanding back into the decoding process of the individual interpretation of meanings. The new arrangement of G (Generalization) I (Illusion) F (Formation) reflects the absurdities of everyday reality and dives into a world constructed by fictional representations, posing several questions exploring cultural connections and states of existence.
However, misunderstanding is not necessarily wrong. From time to time, I tend to misunderstand things, accidentally mispronounce exhibition titles, or strangely connect to inexplicable points. None of these matters, for along the path of recurring misunderstandings, there might just be a ‘gift’ waiting.
About G.I @ Fu
Text by TSAI SHang-FU
The expansion of the meaning of words is not difficult to use language, on the contrary, harmonic puns has become ubiquitous everywhere : For it’s send Paul !
Through the pronunciation and meaning of the technical acronym GIF, I frame the continuity and connection in my personal creative process - a moment in time, a live state, a cycle of transient and dynamic images, and the selection of ready-made objects and their symbolic expansion of meaning to shape "anomalies" from the anomalies of the everyday.
The subtlety of using acronyms is to expand the scope of the title, which G.I@F has chosen to use: Generalization, Illusion, Formation. ╮(╯＿╰)╭ would say: "For audiences who are logically oriented to language, I offer an entry point to reading other than the sensual.”It is also the basic visual element in my work, which comes from looking at the logic of the arrangement of coordinates mixed with plural meanings, and it is also an exercise in the application of visual elements.
In this exhibition, I try to bring the audience the possibility of reverie by designing a bridge and choreographing some kind of evocation, the dissatisfaction from the reality of the desire, and achieve some kind of solace through the interactive mechanism, the dislocation between the ready-made routines, the appropriation, and deviation of the established impressions, or simply the picture is silly but funny!
攝影/楊祐丞
