Agency of Light (Diptych), 2013 : Artist's Statement in English

Agency of Light (Diptych)

Analogue and Digital C-type Prints | 50.8cm x 60.1cm Each | 2013

I

As Buddhist Heart Sutra taught, 

‘nothing’ is not different from ‘thing’; 

form is indeed voidness and vice versa 

(“rūpaṃ śūnyatā śūnyataiva rūpaṃ”). 

Each diptych of this series, consisting of 

a photograph and a photogram of a dolour composition 

created with simultaneous exposure, 

is a photographic contemplation on 

‘being’ and ‘nothingness’.

II

Colour is always affiliated to the ‘things’, 

but it does not belong to them. 

It is not substantial quality, 

but a variable, unfixable or temporal property of light. 

Thus, what is the colour, then? 

If even a transparent material can have a colour, 

what is colour? 

Is colour a ‘thing’?

Does a colour have a shadow? 

Moreover, colours are always changing 

according to the intensity, the angle, 

the shape or the temperature of light. 

Colour is an intractable 

yet enthralling and intoxicating phenomena of light.

III

These diptychs are unique because of the picture of shadow, 

rather than the picture of ‘thing itself’. 

The photograph on the right side of each diptych is restrained 

with its paired photogram. 

Without their paired photograms, 

the photographs cannot convey their meanings. 

Thus, authenticity and reproducibility, 

primary colours and complementary colours, 

or eventually things and shadows are intermingled each other, 

by virtue of the agency of light.