ILLUMINATED PRESENCE
Yeh Wei-Li: Interpretive+ Yeh Shih-Chiang

The project brings together photography-installation artist Yeh Wei-Li (b.1971) and late master painter Yeh Shih-Chiang (1926-2012). One part of this project was shown at the recent Taipei International Biennale 2016, and another detail was selected for the Slovenia International Triennial of Contemporary Art in 2016.

Yeh Wei-Li’s “on-site archeology” turns artistic practice into methodology of research. Through imaginative engagement he breathes new life into “historical remains” of Yeh Shih-Chiang’s life and art. The project includes a physical renovation of the older master’s abandoned residence, and inventive interpretation of his archive and “relics”. In so doing, he transformed the spirit and atmosphere of the world inhabited by Yeh Shih-Chiang into a physical experience in the here and now. Yeh Wei-Li has now developed this work into an on-going long term project for the foreseeable future.

In his lifetime the reclusive Yeh Shih-Chiang (1926-2012) was widely known for his enigmatic presence and uncompromising character. He rejected the academic art institution, refused compromise between art and society, and rejected all gain from art. In his refusals, he elevated art into an uncorrupted faith.

Of this on-going project of creativity and interpretation, Yeh Wei-Li said: “It is a daunting task to excavate ‘Greatness’…it propels one forward, in continuum, without knowing; endless questions arise, they beckon, and you dig, you mine deeper, you surrender, then enter subterranea where magic overflows…”

Yeh Wei-Li utilizes his customary approach of gradualness and penetrating observation over extended periods of time, to depict the slow mining of the remains of things used by the old master and their eventual transformation. It is precisely this extensive labor of the hand and unflinching spirit and belief in what is necessary to achieve lasting presence and memory of places and a life lived that binds the two artists’ works together. Through Yeh Wei-Li’s installation and time-based photographic tableaus is constructed a layered dialogue with the elder artist that elucidates the two corresponding lives and practices, while illuminating and giving sense to both.