Still Life
Artist's Statement

Living experiences are my staple source of creation, but I do not merely grab objects and depict them directly.

I use a lot of ready-made items in my work. They are some familiar items in our daily life or separate parts of them. When they become part of visual creation, they are released from conventional frames and return to the basic material that they are made of. Meanwhile, they still possess the attribute of friendliness, which makes artwork less detached, because the audience might unconsciously project their feelings onto the work and dialogues then start.

Those works are records of my life. Once they have been represented visually, stories then are completed but that is not important for the audience. The creator is not entitled to force their audience to read his stories. These stories should be re-created in images for the audience.

How to lead the audience to dialogue with themselves is what I have tried to achieve for a long. Visual representation leads us to reflect upon our feelings and perceptions. The more pure the material is, the more capable it is to lead us to transcend the visual sense to return to our spiritual selves as the enlightenment the natural world has brought us. While creating work, I look for meaningful elements to record my life and simultaneously consider the distance between them and my audience.

I anticipate people to see images in my work as transient catalysts to lead them back to themselves and start to explore their own feelings. Just as seeing a flower, we need the flower to guide us to a spiritual world. This is my understanding of Avalokitesvara (Guanzizai). The existence of images is essential, but their ultimate value lies in its guiding us to feel life. What Laotze holds ‘the simplest nature appears inconstant’ is what I pursue whole my life. So far, my understanding is that images are catalysts. When we see something, it is the feelings aroused that count. One feels with his heart. Since the visual sense can lead to spiritual feelings, visual images then should soon give way to those feelings.

Still life can be quiet beings or motionless beings. If visual stimuli can lead us to dialogue with ourselves and embrace ourselves, the ephemeral beauty of life can become eternal.

(Excerpt from Tsai Ken, Still Life Artist's Statement)