Looking at looking, The poor hospital, up then down, out there, not working

Research background In his 1997 essay, 'The Ultimate Departure Lounge', the British writer J. G. Ballard wrote: 'Airports have become a new kind of discontinuous city... I suspect that the airport will be the true city of the 21st century. The great airports of the planet are already the suburbs of an invisible world capital, a virtual metropolis whose faubourgs are named Heathrow, Kennedy, Charles de Gaulle, Nagoya, a centripetal city whose population forever circles its notional centre, and will never need to gain access to its dark heart.' This series of works poses the question: do we pause to consider what effect generic urban environs, efficient and efficiently blank spaces, have on us? How are we shaped by these vast 'unnoticed' structures that play so large a role in our lives? Research contribution These paintings provide metaphorical readings of contemporary society, forming as representations of ciphers embodying change and entropy, poised between being and not being and functioning as signs evoking contemporaneity. This work forms as a fiction that 'allows us to imagine our world differently, and as such it offers escape routes... from our representational and often over stratified sense of self' (O'Sullivan, Art encounters Deleuze and Guattari : thought beyond representation. 2006, p. 29). The imagery in this work forms as a kind of symptom of disorganisation and resembles what Gilles Deleuze calls a 'zone of indeterminacy' (Deleuze, Francis Bacon : the logic of sensation. 2005, p.16) due to it existing as an in-between of states, a becoming that is not 'finished'. Research significance These paintings were a contribution to an exhibition selected by the curator, Anna-Louise Rolland, (Director of Leipzig International Artist Programme) investigating the current state of art in relation to spaces. Inclusion in this artist residency and exhibition was through an international peer selection process.

研究背景 英国作家J.G.巴拉德在1997年的随笔《终极候机楼》中写道："机场已然成为一种新型的断裂之城……我猜想，机场或将成为21世纪真正的城市。地球上的大型机场，已然是一座无形世界之都的郊区，这座虚拟大都会的‘近郊’名为希思罗、肯尼迪、戴高乐、名古屋——这是一座向心之城，其居民永远围绕着概念中的中心盘旋，永远无需踏入其幽暗内核。"本系列作品提出了如下设问：我们是否曾驻足思考，那些同质化的城市环境、高效却近乎空洞的空间，会对我们产生怎样的影响？这些在我们生活中扮演如此重要角色的巨型"无人留意"的建筑，究竟如何塑造了我们？

研究贡献 这些画作为当代社会提供了隐喻性解读，作为承载变化与熵增的符号表征，介于存在与虚无之间，成为唤起当代性的符号。该作品构建了一种"让我们以不同方式想象自身世界的虚构叙事，正因如此，它为我们提供了逃离路径——逃离我们那常被过度层级化的自我表征与认知"（O'Sullivan，《邂逅德勒兹与瓜塔里：超越表征的思考》，2006年，第29页）。本作的意象构成了一种失序的症候，因其处于多种状态的中间地带，是一种尚未"完成"的生成过程，这与吉尔·德勒兹所言的"不确定性区域"（德勒兹，《弗朗西斯·培根：感觉的逻辑》，2005年，第16页）如出一辙。

研究意义 这些画作曾参与由策展人安娜-路易丝·罗兰（莱比锡国际艺术家项目总监）策划的展览，该展览旨在探讨艺术与空间的当下发展状态。本次艺术家驻留项目与展览的入选资格，均通过国际同行评审流程产生。