[Invisible Layers of Scenery] is a piece of Tsong's Settlement of Time Series.
Joseph Mallord William Turner, an English landscape painter, was known for his consummate skill in capturing the interplay between light and shadow. He tended to depict his immediate visual impression with expressive colorization. Inspired by Turner’s engrossing oeuvre, Tsong Pu, who usually excluded identifiable symbols from his compositions, deliberately chose to create physical but faintly discernable imagery in his art series Settlement of Time. The diffusing, enigmatic scenes resemble the clues that evoke our memories of stories, close acquaintances, life-experiences, or the elapsing time of no return — “Each piece of this series shows the trace of a condensed moment, and their aggregation is turned into a settlement of time,” Tsong Pu stated.
Gazing at the work [Invisible Layers of Scenery], you may see a dead ringer for bitmap images in the spread of dazzling and stunning golden tone. It is a simulation based on precise calculation, which makes a clear allusion to the fact that any possible scenery is nothing but the viewer’s romantic imagination, and any resemblance is entirely coincidental.
Tsong Pu’s career as an artist has spanned nearly 40 years since he returned from Spain in 1981, bringing him an iconic status in the Taiwanese contemporary art scene. More specific, he is not only a minimalist artist in the spotlight, but also a bellwether for material and ideational innovation in the pluralistic genealogy of Taiwanese contemporary art. His achievements and reputation rest as much upon his long-term forward-looking horizons for creation, as upon his brilliant, sui generis philosophy of art evolved from his prolific career over the past four decades.
