VINCIWENG
MY WONDERLANDS
digital composite photograph
2012 ~ 2017


My inspiration for this series came from styles of painting and cinematic stages when digital imaging became a new way to depict my fantasylands. Basically, the methods and techniques of the exciting image-making that related to photographic skills, digital technology and notions of painting. These digital images revealed new ways of seeing and thinking in terms of post-photographic practice.

By referencing pictorial and filmic conventions, ‘My Wonderlands’ is focused on the re-thinking of a ‘cinematographic’ picture which presents the East-West pictorial concepts; it also associates with the ideas between realism and surrealism. The series of work can be described as representing a fictitious world of their own, with an intriguing organization of fields, depths, scales and colours which is the central subject to my work. The works are fantastic set in a fictional universe, often inspired by our real world; these are without specific places or venues. The landscapes in these photographs appear to represent the multiple-perspective compositions; they raise a number of surreal assemblages as well as dramatic boundaries in the theatrical scenarios. As a kind of ‘wonderland’ or ‘garden of delights’, I narrate events and tales through my storytelling pictures.

More specifically, the series has a group of magic events that invites the viewer into the wonder tales of my Utopia, in which both natural and artificial realities exist at the same time in the fictitious landscapes. With the use of vivid colour and theatrical juxtapositions, my large-scale photographs visually emphasize the depth and scale in the imaginary fields. I believe that our imaginations will bring out different realities, when we a longer look at the details of these photographs.


DÉJÀ VU
digital composite photograph
2010 ~ 2011


​Among visual arts, I believe that photography, painting, and animation share a strange yet rich relationship. At times, their connections run so deep that I can borrow from them and lent to my work. As a form of digital experiment, I re-questioned the orthodox technology and mediums of image making. I utilized my early calligraphy, drawing and painting as part stimulation in support of my digital composite photo. From first thought to fully realized image, I made a series of digital editing and photographic studies. The electronic space for me, was ‘mentally supernatural’, and had a sense of ‘beautiful mystery’; this medium helped to extend my experimentation in image making.

The development of the space makes it be a passage from the romantic sublime to the surreal beauty. The surrealistic idea stimulates a wide variety of issues in cinema and montage that are revealed through different ways in the work. This spirituality reminds me of the interpretation of the uncanny qualities of configuration and space. Indeed, it can be perceived that the uncanny suggests that it is an exploration of darkness.
CONTINUOUS SURFACE
digital moving image
2009 ~ 2010


‘Continuous Surface’ is an experimental project of extending and re-forming my early painting in an animated way. The abstract images in motion present a continuous pictorial surface, having a sense of ‘time’ for painting. In the immersive cyberspace, this series remains on the borderline of abstract painting and experimental animation. It is also a way to appear my moving image as painting. In the creative process, from concept to production, it probably is a combination of subconscious and the way my brain processes it, seeking a more effective means of communicating my sensibility of the ‘imaginary scenes’ or ‘inner landscapes’.
LYRICISM
digital moving image
2008 ~ 2009


In fact, what I consider essential in the lyrical abstraction of the moving image is that the running shapes could act as a critical visual language, which is produced by the manner of Cavell’s automatism. The ‘kaleidoscope-like’ visual language can be presented in aesthetic, metaphorical, and passional forms, or can even play between these different forms. From its essential relation with the language of the motion picture, the abstraction draws a very surrealistic form.

For these moving images, colour, to whatever degree it is achieved, is derived from the simplicity of shape, light, and shadow in the instances of action. The colour of time derives from the abstracted effects of light and shadow, as it is embedded in the moving image. As the German psychologist Fechner who believed that colour could sympathize emotions of the viewer to reach a sense of beauty. The colours of time emphasise the structural forms – the ‘contents’ of the work, inviting the audience to consider, and hopefully rediscover beauty in the work. This is, in a way, a particular visual sense that differs from our ordinary aesthetic experience.

The coloured image in the work does not refer to a particular meaning of object, but it is the lyrical power that explores the expressions of freedom and mutation. The extreme slowness of the colour-image movements facilitates the development of a pictorial sense of space and time by the audience to develop any pictorial sense of space and time. The ‘lyric’ sense underlines the space of fiction, in which time is as a suspendible factor.

SIXTEEN EPISODES
digital moving image
2007 ~ 2008


I consider the moving-image project as a style of ‘artist animation’. Its idea comes from my early digital still ‘Formless Sublime’ that is significantly inspired by pictorial notions and calligraphic structures, as I often use Stanley Cavell’s ‘automatic’ methodology while working on my experimental process of image. This process suggests a relationship between an abstract structure and the desired state of subconsciousness. The expression in turn allows me to re-discover calligraphic sublime by the ‘slow-motion-soundless’ moving image.

​These moving images in the project ‘Sixteen Episodes’ have their own significance as ‘sixteen scenarios’, which infer the meanings of psychic object and place. They become a sort of figurative space, almost like an ‘inner landscape’ in motion. In some way, the new morphology involves various linear pleasures and romances that present a sense of aesthetic purity. In the series of the animation, the simplicity reflects Oriental calligraphic spirituality with a void and concrete correlation. These digital animations are without audio effects; they are intangible and psychologically real while also creating a romantic kingdom, an uncanny world that features a group of bio-morphic constructions from 2-D graphics to 3-D shapes. 

They have a surreal sense when put together as uncertain ‘living’ forms in the work. These forms are not only a result of different patterned mixtures, but also have an important characteristic appearance. The sixteen animations here present ambiguous forms and spaces in movement, fading away, and floating behind the dark backgrounds. I think they have a feeling, and yet, more than a feeling in the common sense.

FORMLESS SUBLIME
digital composite photograph
2006


I tried to re-invent the cursive marks in developing my imagination from the motifs of psychic landscapes. Inspired by Joan Miro’s painting, I continued my pictorial exploration of new automatism, and pursued the notion in more depth while investigating the relationship between unconscious strokes, surreal forms and computer-generated images. I found that the cursive abstraction was a stepping-stone to more complex construction for my moving image. The approach taken in the projects attempted to open up new routes in my digital fine art practice through the linkage of Eastern and Western concepts of pictorial construction.
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