shadow play

  When I was going in a twilight room. I saw a lot of swirling, relentless, endless cycle shadows were projected on a piece of wall. The simple light sources transformed a moving collection of toys into many shadows which emerge and disappear, increase and diminish, come together and fall apart.

  This is the work named “shadow play” in Hamburger Bahnhof Museum. It is created by a Germany artist Han-Peter Feldman, he make a comfortable and slight perception to lead me to go into a secret his garden, the rolling pieces on the table like a music box (I think everybody have one at the childhood)to play a silent sound by light and shadow. It represents a general, conceptual meaning – lapse and retrieve of childhood fantasy and memory.  

  The work “shadow play” remind me the other work “rise and fall” by Fiona Tan in Venice Biennale. Although they are different piece and feeling, I was attracted by the moment of divergence images overlapping and interweaving. For me, the context of them is similar to remind an uncertain, mutable, incongruence feeling (youth hood/childhood). No matter the shadow emerges and disappears, the edge of the falls emerges and the water tumbles off into a void. They are both describe the memory connect one another in the minds.

  His work involves a continual reliving experience in dreaming and hallucinations. And I am interested in the repetition of memory, our memory repeat to us what we haven’t yet come to terms with, what still haunts us. And I try to cross through between the table and wall, I see a large shadow of me is appear, overlap with another one and disappear. I dun no what it is connote, but it is a good exploration to me.