站台中国20周年｜线上展览回顾：2017

This is a story teller’s comment on other storytellers.In other words, an artist uses his own paintings to comment on other artists.These artists and stories include Bresson’s Behind the Gare Saint-Lazare shot in 1932, Yves Klein’s Leap into the Void in Paris; a day in Date Paintings of On Kawara, Hopper’s American Landscape, showing loneliness of earth in paintings; Beuys’hat and German flag, Serra’s steel plates at Kassel; the word “Russia” on brownblocks, and 3 p.m. in Raymond Carver’s novels. 

The stories are told in different ways, such as documentary, adaptation, borrowing stories or comparison. The events and encounters occurring  in their daily lifeare also recorded by storytellers as emotions or expressed directly.  The different torytelling and comments, the seamless change between histories and imaginations have formed an interaction, constituting Liu Gangshun’s notes. 

Sometimes, many notes imply value judgement, and sometimes they just record a vague moment. Being a faithful record can not explain why choosing these stories since there were so many events and people in history? The history can not prove itself, only when a storyteller needs the truth, will the truth speak: but in what kind of context and in what order, will what kind of truth be spoken? Or, only we have learnt the dual background of the story and the story teller can we understand the past based on the present; with the help of the past can we learn the present.

"Notes of History" are comments, stories, and the definition of the artists themselves. When notes begin to stretch, drawing turns into a long-term work with experience and significance, which will explore the reality while connecting the history. Liu needs to search references repeatedly and define himself by layering together his historical experience and connecting hope and frustration brought by his personal experience. 

During the process of definition, he needs to constantly choose between yes and no, great and small, far and near, which is similar as the images we have seen in the novels and films. We keep approaching, pushing away and staying way while immersing ourselves in the scene at the same time. During his long-term creation, Liu repeated these actions, to gradually shorten the distance between historical and personal experience which finally turned increasingly vague. At last, if he is lucky enough, he will find out the true meaning from the vague.  

← EN

Let’s Talk Properly — perhaps this phrase is our only common ground.

This time, I want to share fragments of myself. They are drawn from a diary two years old—mundane musings, casual chatter, or even vomit-like outpourings. Within lie fourteen dreams, twenty-four truths, familiar women, avoided bodies, reassessed values, and a sprite.

These fragments compose the essence of a real person. They are as vital as a shadow, lending authenticity to existence. The ocean, shadowless, feels illusory; ghosts, shadowless, are rightfully deemed unreal.

Yet these fragments, too, behave like shadows. Each time I bend down to approach my own shadow, it crouches lower, poised to flee. So I must call upon friends to anchor my darkness underfoot, lest it vanish entirely.

Look—what choice do I have but to ask: Let’s talk Properly.