Overlaying Time and Emotion in Three Dimension

About Skyler Chen’s Painting

By Wang Min'an

Most works of Skyler Chen presented were within an interior space. He almost using the same method to present it: concentrating on a table and its surroundings, however, he partially cut the space, not showing the whole space of indoor looking. Meantime, those tables were not entirely shown, they were being cut, characters’ face and body were also partly painted, only mouth or nose can be seen. Skyler Chen is using this technique to relocate the painting area: cut the space, cut the table, cut the facial expression. Made this limited space and other elements incomplete, except details of objects on the table are intact, people can identify those items. But not characters’ face, not whole perspective of the interior space.

The space is restricted because of the focal point. Therefore, it appears tension of striction on the painting. Once the facial expression is unseen, audience would easily concentrate on tiny items around the table. Various objects on the surface: flowers and plants, fruits, water cups, books, animals, toys, bubble milk tea, and Xiao Long Bun --- those may represent daily supplies for artist himself, his necessary background --- we can tell, those are typical home essentials, seems like family just related to those essential items, instead of certain place or other home supplies (such as household appliances or other large furniture). Those small objects are touchable and totally controllable, they could grab on hand, shift, arrange randomly, even add or delete anytime, no matter they existed in reality, or just painted on canvas. They constantly appear and rearrange every time, accordingly, enhanced the impression of indoor living, seem like home living and its vibe are associate with those home essentials.

Repeating same objects on canvas and rearranging them on purpose highlighted their existence. What is the reason to do so? Those objects or items are possessed with certain features of time travel. They peeled out of the historical context and equipped with common adaptability. The evolution of products is widespread in any trip experience depends on the globalization. Once people start to travel constantly, so as essential objects. An individual may live in different city, may encounter with different culture, language, or people --- just like Skyler Chen’s experiences, he is a nomad culturally and geographically. However, no matter how to wander, everyone is going to establish their own resident, a particular shelter in strange foreign city. Specifically, people travel elsewhere and temporarily stay in different cities, eventually, he or she could still deploy habitat based on their own personality, to live in original residence, original culture. Nomadism and migration spontaneously impact one’s outside, but there is inner stability, in other word, the root deeply inside makes people become stable. This home-stay residence transcends certain location, culture, time, and space to maintain consistency.

For Skyler Chen, room like this is not relative with architecture, area, furniture, or decoration --- home isn’t a structure or code of hardware, he erased those components, except the small space around the table, a specific norm that made up with detailed objects. Home is a vibe, an environment surrounded with little things, a taste of Xiao Long Bun that he always painted on the canvas. It is a vibe of silence, no agitation, or any kind of sound. Skyler Chen rarely spoke with anyone until fourth grade, he has a childhood with long silence. Perhaps this is reason behinds his quiet painting. Book is everywhere, enhanced the sense of silence. Books produce no voice but keep silent, they have extraordinary meaning for Skyler Chen --- He learned reading and writing later than his peer, book was his barrier. When book appears on his painting, it doesn’t only stand for object itself, it’s something can compete and accompany with painting. The first tactic that he interacted with the world is painting instead of reading. Both two shaped his life in unusual way --- same with how the Xiao Long Bun made influences on him. Painting because unable to read or write, paraphrase, painting is how he read and write. Potential competition between paint and write started from here, at this point, book is the bottleneck of his painting so as his personal life. The obvious exitance of book in those paintings, is identical with sense of denying when the dyslexia affected his past life.

Norms of silent and solitude within Skyler’s works are easily remind people about his experience and memory. Past is vibe, vibe of residence. Skyler Chen’s painting isn’t narrative but ambient. He never completely forgets his childhood and original family --- Xiao Long Bun is direct evidence. Though he was constantly living in elsewhere, else language, else city. Eventually, he was trying to live in his own space, so he can live with his habits based on personal memory, layout the ambient of nostalgic. Like the impulsion when Freud discovered the eternal return.

If resident in state of nostalgic for a long-term, ambient fulfilled background, a memorable blurry mask will naturally arouse on the painting. Those memories always make scenes hummed and hawed. In Skyler’s interior room with tension of striction, everything seems unreal, include people with unshown appearance and delicate objects, all come along with a dream. Character and background were exquisite painted, combined abstract and fine art at the same time, but also hallowed; friendly and distant; surrealism and realism happened at once. Those works have realistic accuracy, moreover, ecstasy hide behind precision: may because marvelous arrangement of items, or quirky scene itself, or unbelievable gesture of the protagonist, make the painting arise the sense of surrealism. That kind of feeling not just dreamy, but also originated futurism apocalypse: cold and straight lines, indifferent facial expression, rigid post, and smooth surface --- all these traits similar with certain mechanical qualities. Painting itself and character within it, they look no tenderness, no fluctuate, no curving, no ripple or sway --- individual be like objectify machine, which is meaningless to next generation, live in utopia wonderland. Therefore, memorable objects on the table reminds audience nostalgic emotions, but mechanical characters destroyed the sense of home. Using alienation to weak homesick, using futurism to break utopian nostalgia. That is paradox presented in Skyler’s works: attachment and deviation with family, past and future description with painting --- current stroke with futuristic enlighten, or we can say it’s chemical reaction with Tomorrowland.

Then those works provided with a complicated superposition of time travel: viewers can observe past, now, and future simultaneously. In the other word, it is entanglement of three different tense. Complicated the time dimension in this stringent room. That is the reason why difficult to use conformed timeline to define his works. Only exist momentarily for this second silently and motionlessly, but also lead to childhood and memory (no matter food or book), then lead to mechanical apathy of unknown future generation. Since the timeline includes three dimensions, make this room more crowded and more intensive. Causing the effect of time folding. Objectified future generation not only present in individuals, but also social relationships, whether indoor or outdoor, they are strangers to each other. Expressionless without eye contact, no interaction with audience. Even the intimate relationship (“In Our Kingdom” is one of few paintings that have multiple characters, inspired from Pai Hsien-young’s fiction, replicate the understanding of intimate relationship), shows coldness, distant, materialized, no willing to contact. To emphasize the disconnection, Skyler painted several diptych and triptych, they look like a unity, but also have impassable gulf; they seem can collage as complement, but also have unattachable gap; they can make eye contact, but also have disparity.

Skyler Chen painted portraits, but not in the interior, flat background only, sometimes even the background is hazy, those portraits not artificially robot, but anxiety appears on their face. If the alienation, solitude, coldness are common senses of modern citizen evolved along with industrial machinery development and becoming more and more obvious, then anxiety is not going to be futurism. Anxieties exist in this moment; it is rebellion to be mechanization. Skyler Chen expressed three dimensions of timeline, meantime, he expressed three dimensions of emotion: sorrow in the past, anxiety in the moment, and irreversible alienation resulted in absolute estrangement in the future.