I began the series of new works in the exhibition “Side Wall” since 2015, while I was Artist-In-Residence at RUD AIR in Sweden, located in a small town called Bengtsfors in Dalsland province, southwest of Sweden. The town is surrounded by forests and local residents are extremely respectful of the natural environment. They know how to live in harmony with nature, in life and in death. It is as if the residents have signed a contract with nature; living off its resources that the forest charitably gives. Day after day year after year, life in Sweden becomes a precise calculation, as if confined to a cell, causing us to think over and over on the sin of being human, a sin as dark as the forest at midnight, a sin that is violence.
I fabricated the memoirs which is about a slayer who lives secluded in the forest, and al though he spends most of his life carrying out violence for other people’s purposes, he can look at violence with no self-consciousness. When I started planning the series, I felt like I was writing the slayer’s memoirs, I stood in his position and disbursed different elements of violence into the forest, portrayed in each painting. If all of his memories of violence are vertical lines, then the forest and the law of nature are horizontal lines, intersecting and obscuring each other; this is a true depiction of the violence of the present.
It was a refugee from Afghanistan who told me stories that led me to think of the form of violence. He had spent three years immigrating to the small town. After shedding his identity as a refugee he became a security guard at the only train station that connects the town to other areas. He keeps asking everyone the same question, “do you think humans are inherently good or bad?” I wasn’t able to answer his question before leaving the town. After I left, Europe was under the threat of terrorist attack again. On my return, Øresundsbron, the bridge that once symbolized tolerance, introduced strict border control, which showed that the Swedish government’s policy on refugees had failed. Nobody wants to think about the goodness and violence in humanity. It led me to research the details of violent events and consider what consists of the human spirit and human behavior. I depicted these discoveries of violence into the imagery of natural scenes, using areas of repetition and overlay, anticipating that the coagulation of nature and violence in “Side Wall” can provide enough time and sense of security to bury our violence and be reborn again for ourselves.
－用自然與暴力混凝
此系列作品是我從2015年在瑞典RUD AIR駐村期間開始發想與進行至今的創作，我將之命名為“邊牆”想探討的主題是關於暴力。此次駐村單位是在瑞典西南方Dalsland省一名為Bengtsfors的森林小鎮，鎮上的人很尊重自然跟時間，也懂得怎麼跟它們相處，跟著自然一起生一起死，人類就像是與自然做了協定，使用它們施捨的資源一季復一季地活著，但顯然這種生活方式是有難度的，極少的人口讓這座小鎮看起來像是被全世界遺忘了，這讓我感覺在瑞典的每一天都像是生活在一種計算的方式中，向自己提問：人類有多少力量能轉化成樹木與石頭，沒有便只能乞求，那種卑微彷彿是在禁閉室省思著身而為人的罪惡，像夜晚的森林這麼深的罪惡，那就是暴力了。
所以在創作最初我杜撰了一個角色，他是一位隱居在森林裡的屠殺者，雖然他一輩子都在為別人的目的而執行暴力，但他也同時是一個沒有任何自我意識所以能夠完全旁觀暴力的人。開始規劃每件作品便像是撰寫他的回憶錄似的，藉由他的立場將人類各種面向的暴力元素帶入這片森林，呈現在每個畫面上。假如他一切關於暴力的記憶是縱線，那代表大自然永恆定律真理的森林就是橫線，兩者交錯下彼此會慢慢被遮掩被模糊化，但那才是最真實屬於當下這個時代的暴力。
讓我思索到此暴力形式的人是一位來自阿富汗的難民，他花了三年時間移居到我所駐村的小鎮，除去難民的身份在鎮上唯一對外交通聯繫的火車站當守衛員，逢人就問“你覺得人類是好人還是壞人”？在我離開小鎮之後還沒來得及回答這個問題，歐洲就再次遭遇了巴黎的恐怖攻擊事件，回到鎮上的那天，象徵包容的厄勒海峽大橋（Øresundsbron）重啟了嚴格的邊境管制，瑞典政府收容難民的政策已失去平衡，人性間的暴力與善良成為大家逃避思索的問題，非地域性而是全人類都同時面臨的問題，這促使我開始研究暴力事件與其所對應的人類精神本質與行為，將它們轉換為視覺圖像後全然投入自然場景中尋求庇護。在繪畫形式上我也希望能夠呈現出這樣的遮掩與模糊，當我提及暴力時我讓它像故事軸線一樣清楚呈現每個元素，當我用自然去破除它時我用了大面積的重複與覆蓋。讓繪畫跟著我的心志一起進行一場暴力的演繹，期許這道用自然與暴力混凝的“邊牆”讓人類有足夠時間與安全感把暴力掩蓋起來，為自己重生。