历经一年多的创作，经过无数次翻来覆去的试验，叶锦添的作品最终汇集了不可思议的幻象和最纯粹的现实生活，真实与荒诞如此诡谲地结合在一起，组成了一部人的心灵史。最近，我常在梦中跳入叶锦添作品中所呈现的场域，我被追赶着，一次次被按在时间的手术台上，审视自己的内心与生活。我愿意记录下一年来对叶锦添创作的跟踪，并尽力真实地浓缩叶锦添每一阶段创作的变化、成形前后的想法——虽然，这一组作品从根本上表达了一种反语言、反阐释的倾向。

种子：怪兽森林
时态决定的恶“童”

　　长时间的封闭与文化断层之后，中国急速发展到了一个东西方猛烈撞击的时期，北京无疑正中靶心。

　　2003年，香港艺术家叶锦添定居北京。

　　也是2003年，中国当代艺术被前所未有地引爆了。在经济增长引发的全方位的中国热潮中，在西方艺术评论体系与艺术市场的双重建构下，政治波普艺术从台下走上台面，以对自身文化的嘲笑、挖苦、愤怒，成为中国众多当代艺术家的集体语汇；西学东替成为中国当代艺术的集体方法。越来越高的价码支撑着中国当代艺术一派繁荣生机的景象，也构筑了一股强势的话语权利。中国当代艺术在滑向某种做作、聪明、诡变的过程中形成了某种趋势，渐渐远离了中国传统人文精神，迷失了自我的理念、人格与价值判断，丢掉了骄傲，也丢掉了自由。“绝地”之中，中国当代艺术还有别的可能性吗？

　　凭《卧虎藏龙》捧得奥斯卡最佳美术指导的叶锦添，其舞台设计的先锋性与中国传统美学的完美结合，早已蜚声国际。在当代中国急剧变动的这股洪流中，叶锦添以全身毛孔呼吸着这个时代带来的兴奋、纷乱、躁动、焦虑、挣扎、恐慌……他“越来越重”，如缚樊笼。他寻求对环境的控诉，以期得到解脱。在这个过程中，他又回到了忧郁而好胜的童年，儿时涂鸦中常常出现的怪兽形象，一次次电击般穿透着他，不断地与这个时代的荒诞相呼应。对于做了太长时间历史剧的叶锦添而言，玩具艺术是一个新奇、剌激的游戏。他上瘾一般开始了他的创作：各种长满眼睛、类似鳄鱼的怪兽，从大肚子里面爬出婴儿的怪兽，千奇百怪，身形均在数米开外，在它们蓄势待发的前一秒钟，以或挂或趴或睡或立的姿态凝固在深邃幽暗的巨大空间。它们身上潜伏着巨大的暴力因子，撞得伤肢废体也要往前冲，形成一种生死交织的恐怖氛围，产生一股让人无法透气的力量。你好像不小心掉进了这个世界，却没有办法改变任何事。当时的计划是一层的展览规模。叶锦添还打算做一些与现代人相关、与怪兽相关的装置。

　　这个展览的种子——怪兽森林——早已在童年记忆的深处埋下；对现实的不满则催生了新艺术理念的种子。

萌芽：如果我自由，你来吗？
新东方主义

　　社会经济转型给艺术创作与市场带来的浮躁与狂热，是历史与现实构成的伤口，它溃烂深重却艳若桃花，更让人沉迷不知返。只有纯粹的艺术家，才敢按着自己的内心，提出诘问：我们自由吗？如果我自由，你来吗？

　　叶锦添是个天生的冒险家，他身体中流动着叛逆的血液。在对自我与社会的逼视中，他将一个根源于儿童内心的暴力游戏，与他平素本能的摄影、VIDEO拍摄相结合，慢慢沉潜、演变，生发了更加强烈的象征意义。

　　最初的变化是对怪兽做减法。拿掉眼睛、脸、躯体，拿掉所有具体特征。愤怒与抗争愈演愈烈。渐渐地，古本《山海经》中“夔”的形象跳入了艺术家的视野。“东海中有流波山，入海七千里。其上有兽，状如牛，苍身而无角，一足，出入水必风雨，其光如日月，其声如雷，其名曰夔。”（《大荒东经》）以中国古代传说为脚本，艺术家创作了《浮叶》与《夔》。两个雕塑的主体均是残缺而异质的人体，每块肌肉的走势、线条、纹路，或紧张或松弛；每一个细节的光泽与幽暗，或逼仄或开朗。身体在这个空间得到了彻底的释放，散放着性的意味。叶锦添说：“我想把我从全世界看到的最好的东西，累积到我的作品里面，它就是我的中国。”因此，我们看到的雕塑，既具有文艺复兴时期古典而高雅的品格，亦有贾科梅第的不羁与神经质，还能感觉到20世纪70年代日本的黑暗踏舞对身体创伤的记忆和西班牙Flamenco舞对死亡的渴求……

　　《浮叶》中独脚撑起的巨叶，曾是面展开的牛皮，形似中国地图，创作让艺术家由奋争转入淡定，他在叶子的形式上减去了明确的社会性意向。作品更为简静，外延由此放大了，导入东方天人合一的宇宙观。摄影《树影》与VIDEO《雨》的出现，为《浮叶》开辟了无限的场景，天地雄浑的史前气息。浮叶，是人类的累赘还是港湾？独脚，一只脚，孤独地，奋力奔去，在前进中，寻找着传统与当代、浪漫与现实、原始感与工业化、数字化的平衡。

　　作品《夔》中，增加的VIDEO《太阳》使作品的象征更加丰富。夔和太阳，是子与父，亦是人与神。这里有两个传奇故事。其一是：夔用不停息的舞蹈，吸引着太阳的视线，并分散着太阳的注意力，因为夔的形象一旦被固定，就有可能被杀；太阳藏在树后，满怀好奇，因此不杀夔。另一个神话来自于日本的太阳神崇拜：春去冬来，太阳回到山洞，天地一片黑暗，没有热，没有能量。人们在洞口跳着性感的舞蹈，太阳受声色的吸引探头出来，看到人们手中的镜子反射着自己强烈的光线，太阳停住，春来了。在双重故事中，父与子、神与人的关系被非常巧妙地传达出来。在被猎杀与弑父的双重恐惧与期望之中，人类一直争取欺骗神，让它继续存在。神不是为人而生的，是人把某个形象变成了神。这其中交灼着人们陷入不自由和争取自由的撕扯。艺术家希望“有一股力量对抗太阳，对抗天地”，使人回归到与永恒的对视、与自然对视、与神对视的状态。

　　这里面有几层重要的隐喻：一是将中国当代艺术的特性与艺术家个体经验的短兵相接抽象在雕塑创作之中；二是表现了中国人事出需有“名”的历史传统。中国人讲名正言顺，没名也得捏一个，不然就没有办法讨论，不讨论就没有办法占位，就不存在。最重要的是，它贯彻了叶锦添的个人美学观——新东方主义，东方主义一直以来都是西方探讨东方的角度与立场，在创作中，叶锦添尽力摆脱了西方框架去寻找生存空间，体现了尊从自然的东方精神，表达了中华民族的价值与识见，打破了那层被归纳为“世界文化”的樊篱，是从中国根上生发出来的艺术系统的萌芽，洋溢着新东方主义的人文生机。

生长：童·间·欲
彼岸视觉的解剖术

　　在通往自由的路上，艺术家经历了一次次惊险的练习。一种人在高处心怀忐忑更欲纵身飞越的迷人感觉，一直跟随着叶锦添，使他在创作过程中，在面对自己的时候，出现了一种既期望又回避的状态。叶锦添希望通过影像这种更为直接的语言来表达内心，不过，最初他并没有亲自挑选，而是请英国知名的艺术图书出版人马克·霍尔本（MarkHolborn）帮助。

　　马克了解叶锦添对时间与空间的感觉。一组命名为“间”的影像作品，由他从叶锦添拍摄的成千上万张胶片、数码成像中挑选出来。那是无尽重复的时间与空间。叶锦添的影像敏锐地捕捉到现实生活各个复杂的切面，那是一片我们身处其中却从末看到的景象，那是一些被我们忽略的共同的历史、共同的经历、共同的感觉。我们很难数清叶锦添拍过多少张照片，从1987年开始，叶锦添无时无刻不在求证着影像与日常生活的最大值。对叶锦添而言，按快门，早已如同他的呼吸一样自然、重要。

　　与此同时，“欲”——人对外部世界的求取，人最接近却最不敢碰触，一种追求最好的东西和破坏它的冲动，一种与自由相纠葛的力量，进入了艺术家的视野。“欲”，到底是什么模样？哪些是真实哪些是虚妄？成熟的思考带来了越来越多的问题和越来越大的挑战。

　　一个十五六岁女孩子的脸，一张清洁的、最好时候的脸，出现了。她是关于最美好时光的临界值，在她长成前的每一秒钟，都在期求；在她长成后的每一秒钟，都在离开。青铜的幽光，泛出隔世感，作品蕴含了对温暖的期许、对永恒的念想以及必须消逝的脆弱与伤感。这张脸，这个少女的身体，是艺术家的一个巨大冒险。展场中，她流着泪，浑身散发着静默的力量，让观者看到艺术家一些不想让别人看到的秘密——她是叶锦添创就的维纳斯，她似乎同时代表一种艺术高度的临界值，艺术家不确定到这个高度之后，是不是会重重地摔下去——这是叶锦添的“原欲”，也是叶锦添的恐慌。

　　由此《崩》诞生了。“喜欢到一定程度，你就把她杀了”，叶锦添这样解释——“我就是想看破碎”。散放在垃圾堆上白骨与残肢，最后被安排在《原欲》之前，加剧了人世的绝望与期望。叶锦添所逃避的那个悲观的自我，他对世人不真诚面对生命的态度所产生的失落与无奈，通过创作，一遍一遍地淘出来。这也使他回到自己的影像世界，重新挑选了一组以“渡”命名的摄影作品。

　　《渡》不仅浓缩了叶锦添对时间与空间的看法，同时整体呈现出一种“反文字倾向”。反对阐释的世界，期望达到心里面的视觉语言——未来的语言。这产生了一种新的沟通方法，甚至是没有沟通的方法——作品本身就是语言。

　　三层展场中，每张照片以强烈的戏剧张力组合成一组急促的节奏，每一个简单的光源引发人们去辨识每一张照片上的细节：破裂画面上的女人下体、鱼骨下的残羹和焦葱、红墙上倒挂的墩布、玉腿上斑驳的黄锈、捆绑在脚手架里的住宅无穷无尽的窗、雾气中被水分隔的此岸与彼岸……一个个平常不存在的瞬间合在一起，构成阴影里的世界，引发人在这个世界的孤独感、荒诞感。这些痕迹，是叶锦添的“彼岸视觉”——他所寻找的，是观众的潜影像；每一个他所拍下的，并不是影像本身，而是它以外所有的东西，唯其缺少它，因此便由它出场。在四层展场，我们看到的“渡”，是空荡的地铁、无人的街道、肃静的医院、摩天大楼的天台、废弃的厂房、被拆除的小区……他们以几乎一致的构图，给人们一条条被夹迫的、甬道里的路。

　　枷锁一直存在着，路亦一直存在着。那么路的前方呢？

成熟：寂静·幻象
低智时代的等待室

　　在一个影像包裹的世界，人们普遍患上了“新媒体病”，通过阐释赋予事物意义，然而文字越讲越浅，于是，我们来到一个低智的时代。叶锦添除了真实地表达自己对时代的感受，和这个时代的人们共命运，他也尽量用这个时代能听懂的语言，为这个时代寻找出路。既然“原欲”形成了人们不能沟通的原因，那么“渡”途中，“原欲”如何收尾呢？

　　《等待室》在最后阶段被创作出来了。观众步行至此，会发现一堆东歪西扭的木板，草草地被锈钉子钉成了一个临时性的空间。当你以窥探的姿势，走进去，会看到由外面透入的冷光。两排座椅，人们或睡在上面、或躺在地下，或者坐着、站立着——发短信、打电话、抽烟、发呆……非常安静。每个人都是一样的无所谓的表情。一切看似再平常不过了，就像等待一班延误的航班，等着，不知道在那里等了多久，等什么。也许是等待某种结果，结果又似乎是一个没有意义的东西。

　　等待室是我们每个人的黑盒子，每个人都有的垃圾场；是你很熟悉，又很陌生的地方；是你打不开也关不掉的乌托邦；也是一个最不起眼，但实质上最重要的地方。

　　无常世事的定数，取决于黑盒子中存储的感应。那些看似莫名而突发的事件，早已在黑盒子中埋下了伏笔。人类社会有人类社会的黑盒子。很难想象，没有中世纪教会的黑暗统治，“文艺复兴”的爆发能产生那样强大的力量，人类的科技与文明会发展到今天的地步。叶锦添的“积压”，是生命的积攒，在香港那个交汇点上，从少年时代开始对哲学、历史、宗教、人类学、民生等方面疯狂地研究，东西方文化的桥早早在艺术家脑子里生了根。他说：“做电影的时候，我也会有一些自己一直在争取的所谓的中国自由，压着我，触发我好多反叛的心态。”“一切来自于我的黑盒子，内心有一股原始的欲望，透支在艺术之中，成为一个象征，穿透电影到达这个展览。也让我释放我的黑盒子。”

　　最沉重的是自己。黑盒子是一个人能达到自由和不能达到自由的最后关头，因为一切珍贵的难忘的，都要放弃,它来自于某个渐渐积厚的失乐园。黑盒子亦是一个时代是否能获得自由的关键。人们面对黑盒子需要巨大的勇气，试图理解它，是艺术家的责任。好的作品离不开黑盒子。叶锦添将存在的孤独以视觉的方式传达出来，从未停止过对真实的追求，他不断地面对自己与世界的背后，呈现出真正的状态，最后变得越来越轻，越来越有力量。

　　叶锦添最终将这个展览定名为“寂静·幻象”，是希望在一个低智人群的围困中找到一种继续下去的语言。“你很少会想起我作品中为你呈现的情景，把完全不同导向的东西放在一起，是我的思维方式与创作方法。”“寂静·幻象”是叶锦添在冷静状态下的创作冥想，也是没有名字的名字，透过普通的展名，观众将获得更强烈的反差，并到达任何一种可能。

Postscript
Solitude and Freedom
Creating Tim Yip's Solo Exhibition – Illusions of Silence  
◎ Luo Yi
After over a year's work, numerous experiments over and again, Tim Yip's works is a final assembly of incredible illusions and unadulterated reality; reality and absurdity are paradoxically joined together, and construct a history of his mind. Lately, I often leap into the space Tim Yip has created in his works in my dreams, in which I was pursued and repeatedly pushed onto the operating table of time, an examination of my own inner mind and life. I willingly record my shadowing of Tim Yip's creative process in the past year, and attempt to clarify the transformations of his works in each different phase, his thoughts before and after as each work took shape – even though this series of works intrinsically take an anti-verbal and anti-interpretation stance.

Seeds: Monster Forest
The Evil "Youth" defined by distinctions of time

After long periods of isolation and cultural severance, China acceleratingly plunged into a phase where the East and the West collide heavily against each other, with Beijing undoubtedly, at the center of it all.

In 2003, Hong Kong artist Tim Yip took permanent residence in Beijing.

Also in 2003, contemporary Chinese art exploded like never before. Riding on the waves of China fever prompted by economic growth, based on the double construct of Western art criticism and art market, "political pop-art" marched from the underground to take center-stage, and, through parody, taunts, and rage against its own culture, became the collective vocabulary of many contemporary Chinese artists; "using Western methods to serve the Chinese purpose" became the collective strategy of contemporary Chinese art. Increasingly higher art prices give a group of artists a scenic view filled with rich opportunity, and also building up a powerful hegemonic discourse. In the process of slipping into a pretentious, adroit and fickle state, contemporary Chinese art has drifted away from the traditional Chinese humanistic spirit, and lost beliefs in itself, integrity and value judgment; abandoned its pride and its freedom. Caught in this predicament, are there any other possibilities for contemporary Chinese art?

Tim Yip, Academy Award winner of Best Costume Design for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, is already world renowned for his impeccable integration of the avant-garde and the Chinese traditional aesthetic for theatrical design. In the current torrents of a drastically changing cotemporary China, Yip is breathing in all the excitement, turmoil, restlessness, angst, struggle, panic with all pores wide open... He becomes "heavier and heavier," as if confined in a cage. He denounces the environment around, anticipating release. In this process, he returns to his melancholic and haughty childhood, to the images of monsters that regularly appears in his childhood drawings, running over his consciousness and body again and again, a continuous and absurd reflection in this era. For Tim Yip, who has designed many period dramas, toy art is a new and stimulating game. Like an addiction, he started creating: alligator-like monsters with bodies covered with eyes, monsters with babies crawling out of their bellies – all kinds of bizarre shapes, and easily over 10-feet in size, all frozen in postures of hanging, lying, sleeping, and standing in a dark and cavernous space. Embedded inside those bodies are genes of violence, making them lunge forward in spite of dismembering collision, interweaving a terrifying ambience of life and death, and exerting an asphyxiating power. One feels as if falling into this world by accident, totally helpless. That project originated from a plan for one entire floor, in which Tim Yip also intended to create a few installations related to modern man and monsters.

The seeds of this exhibition – Monster Forest – were buried long ago deep inside his childhood memory, while disaffection with reality expedited the birth of new artistic ideas.

Shoots: If I Was Free, Would You Come?
Neo-Orientalism

Socio-economic transformations have brought about restlessness and frenzy to artistic creation and the art market. It is a deep and festering wound colorful like a peach blossom inflicted by history and reality; attracting people to linger with no return. Only a pure artist dares to raise the question with a hand on his heart: Are we free? If I was free, would you come?

Tim Yip is a born adventurer; he has rebellion in his blood. In his gaze upon self and the society, he took a game of violence that originated from a child's heart and combined it with his usual, instinctive photography and videography; he let it slowly settle and transform, generating even more powerful symbolisms.

The initial transformation was a subtractive process used on the monsters. The eyes, face, body were taken off, as well as all other concrete characteristics. Rage and confrontation were increasingly exaggerated, until the imagery of "Kui" as described in the ancient text The Classic of the Mountains and Seas jumped into Yip's sight. "Over the Eastern Ocean is the Mountain of Billowing Waves, seven thousand miles into the sea. There lives a beast with the shape of a bull. Its body is dark and without horns, and it has only one leg. Storms arise whenever it enters and leaves the water. It is bright as the sun and the moon, and its voice sounds like thunder. Its name is 'Kui'." Taking this ancient legend as a script, the artist created Floating Leaf and Black Dancer. Both sculptures take an incomplete and unusual human body as the subject. The directions, lines, and textures of each muscle all vary – some tense, some relaxed; the details sometimes luminous, sometimes dark, either constricted or open. The bodies receive total release in this space, and exude connotations of sex. "China is now much too fragmented, and can no longer be put back together again. I'd like to take what I see from all over the world and build them into my work. That is my China," Tim Yip explains. Therefore, the sculptures we see here show at once the classical and elegant character of Renaissance as well as the untrammeled spirit and neurotic tendencies of Giacometti, and we even sense the memory of wounded body in the dark Japanese Butoh of the 1970s, and the pining for death in Spanish Flamenco dancing...

The giant leaf propped up by the monopod in Floating Leaf was at one time to be a piece of stretched cowhide, shaped like a map of China. The act of creation had calmed the artist down from an earlier striving mentality, and at the end he took the definite social intention off from this leaf. The work is now more simplified and tranquil; its extension is now enlarged, and the cosmology of the unification between man and heaven is now brought in. The inclusion of photographs in Forest and the video in Rain opens up a boundless setting for Floating Leaf, giving it a sublime, prehistoric flavor. Floating leaf – is it a burden for mankind or is it its refuge? Monopod – a single leg, in all its solitude, runs forward with all its might, and, in its advance, searches for a balance between tradition and modernity, romanticism and realism, primeval sensation and industrialized digitization.

In the work Black Dancer, the additional video Sun enriches the symbolisms in the work. The Black Dancer and the sun are father and son, and also man and God. Two legends are at work here. The first one is: the Black Dancer attracts the visual attention of the Sun by dancing continuously, for once his forms are fixed, he could then be killed; the Sun hides behind trees and is filled with curiosity, thus letting the Black Dancer live. Another myth originates from Japanese sun worship: Spring recedes and winter arrives. The Sun returns to the cave. The world turns completely dark, without heat, without energy. People perform erotic dances at the opening of the cave. Attracted by the sight and sound, the Sun sticks his head out and sees his own bright rays reflected in the mirrors held by the dancers. The Sun stops, and spring arrives again. In both these stories, the relationship between father and son, God and man is brought out in a very intricate manner. Under the double fear and expectation of being killed and killing their father, humankind has always tried to deceive God, allowing his continued existence. God wasn't created for the sake of man; it was man who created God out of certain imagery. Intertwined with all this is the struggle between man's losing freedom and fighting for freedom. The artist longs for a "power that fights the Sun, the universe, and the authority", a power that returns man to a state of mutual gaze with eternity, with Nature, and with God.

Several layers of important metaphors are at play here. First is an abstracting juxtaposition of the characteristics of contemporary Chinese art and the personal experiences of the artist into sculpture. Second is the exposing of a fixed historical tradition in China – one needs a name to be famous. The Chinese see the name before everything else. If you do not have a name, then make one up; otherwise you cannot be discussed, which means you cannot claim a position, which means you do not even exist. Most importantly, it can unify the personal aesthetic of Tim Yip – Neo-Orientalism. Orientalism has always been the West's viewpoint of the East. In his art, Tim Yip does his best in breaking out of the Western mode and searching for his own space. He brings out an Eastern spirit that respects Nature, and the values and insights of the Chinese. His art breaks away from the tethers of the so-called "global culture" and shows the shoots of an art system grown from Chinese roots, full of the humanistic life-energy of Neo-Orientalism.

Growth: Youth, Space, Desire
Visual Anatomy of the Opposite Shore

On his way to freedom, the artist has undergone precarious drills time and again. Following Tim Yip throughout was a tantalizing sensation of standing high up, feeling insecure, yet longing for a leap forward and to fly away. This threw him, while creating the works and facing himself, into a state of expectation and withdrawal. Tim Yip hoped to speak from his heart using the more direct language of images; however, he did not make the image selections at first, and invited a friend, UK based senior art editor Mark Holborn to help him instead.

Mark fully understood Tim Yip's feel of space and time. A series of photographic works titled Space was selected from Yip's tens of thousands of digital as well as film photographs. It is an endlessly repeating space and time. His images sharply capture all the complex angles of the daily reality – a shared history, experience, and feeling ignored by us all. It's impossible to count how many pictures Tim Yip has taken; ever since 1987, he has never stopped pondering on the issue of the common denominator between image and life. For Tim Yip, pressing the shutter is as natural and important as his breathing.

At the same time, Desire – man's taking from the outside world, man's closest yet feared impulse, which searches for and destroys the best and entangle itself with freedom – entered the artist's field of vision. What exactly does Desire look like? Which are the real and which are the false? Mature thinking has brought along more and more questions and bigger and bigger challenges.

The face of a girl fifteen or sixteen years of age, a pure face at its best moment, appeared. She is at the threshold of her prime. Before her maturity, every second is expectation; after her maturity, every second is fleeing. The subdued light from the bronze surface reflects a sense of otherworldliness. The work embodies the longing for warmth, the yearning for eternity, and the melancholy over human frailty. This face, this young girl's body, is a grand adventure on the part of the artist. In the exhibition space, she, with tears running down her face, radiates a power of silence with all her body. She allows the visitor to see certain hidden secrets of the artist – she is the Venus created by Tim Yip. At the same time, she seems to represent a threshold value of certain height in art. Upon reaching this height, the artist wonders if he will then fall far down – such is the "desire" of Tim Yip, and also his fear.

Whereupon Collapse was born. "When you like her to a certain degree, you destroy her," explains Yip. "I just want to see shatters." The bones and amputated limbs scattered on piles of garbage are so arranged right before the work Desire, enhancing the despair and anticipation in this human world. Through his art, we see presented in front of us, again and again, the pessimistic self that Tim Yip is running away from and his feeling of loss and frustration. Which drove him back to his personal world of images, and selected anew a set
The bones and amputated limbs scattered on piles of garbage are so arranged right before the work Desire, enhancing the despair and anticipation in this human world. Through his art, we see presented in front of us, again and again, the pessimistic self that Tim Yip is running away from and his feeling of loss and frustration. Which drove him back to his personal world of images, and selected anew a set
of photographic works entitled "Passage."

Passage is not only a distillation of Yip's view on space and time, but also an expression of an "anti-verbal tendency." Against the world of interpretation, and reaching for an inner visual language – it is a language of the future. This results in a new way of communication, even a way of non-communication – the work itself is the language.

At the exhibition on the third floor, each photograph makes up a set of hurried rhythm with biting dramatic tension, and each simple light source triggers the visitor's identification of all the details in every picture: the female private parts in a broken image, the mop hung upside-down against a red wall, the peeling yellow rust on jade-like thighs with a hand covering the genitalia, the endless apartment windows tied inside scaffolding, this shore and that shore separated by water in mists... A world in shadows, composed of all these instances that normally do not exist, arouses our sense of solitude and absurdity in this life. These traces are Tim Yip's "visual Other." What he is searching for is the viewer's sub-image; what he photographs is not the image itself, but everything that is outside of it – the precise lack of it requires its presence here. On the fourth floor, we see the Passage: empty subway, streets without people, serene hospital, balcony on skyscraper, abandoned factory, demolished communities... in almost exactly the same composition, they offer constricted, tunnel-like passages for the visitor.

Shackles have always been there, and so have the paths. What's ahead of these paths then?

Maturity: Illusions of Silence
The Waiting Room in the Age of Mental Retardation

In this world packaged in images, people are generally afflicted with the "new media disease." Things are given meaning through interpretation, and yet language has become shallower and shallower, and here we are, in this age of mental retardation. Besides honestly expressing his feelings about the times and sharing the same destiny with everybody else in this era, Tim Yip also tries his best to find a way out for this generation, using a language that it understands. Given the fact that Desire is the cause of inability in communication, in Passage, how will Desire tie things together?

Waiting Room was created at the final stage of the project. Walking up to this point, the viewer finds a pile of wooden planks in disarray and joined by rusted nails, forming an ad-hoc space. When you sneak in, you see cold light infiltrating from outside. There are two rows of seats, with people sleeping on them, lying on the floor, seated, standing, sending text messages, talking on the phone, smoking cigarettes, gaping into the void... all very quiet. Everyone has this same nonchalant look. Everything appears as normal as can be. It's like waiting for a delayed flight – waiting, not knowing for how long, and for what. Maybe it's waiting for some kind of result, which might seem meaningless in the end.

Waiting Room is the black box that each of us has, the garbage dump that we all have. It is a place that you are very familiar with, and yet feel distant from; it is a utopia you can neither turn on nor turn off; it is the least noticeable yet actually the most important place.

The impermanent vicissitudes of life really depend on the responses stored inside this black box. Those incidents that appear to be random and spontaneous have foreshadowing sown in the black box long ago. The human world has its own black box. It is hard to imagine that without the dark rule of the medieval church, the Renaissance could break forth with such powerful energy, and that human technology and civilization could arrive at the stage where they are today. Tim Yip's "stocking up" is an accumulation over a lifetime. Since his youth, when he started his obsessive studies in philosophy, history, religion, anthropology, and economics, the bridge between the East and the West has long planted its roots inside his mind. "When working on films, I would have the so-called Chinese freedom, which I pursue continuously, pressuring me and inciting many rebellious thoughts within me," Yip says. "All come within my black box. There's a primeval desire inside my heart, which overdraws in the realm of art and becomes a symbol that goes through film and arrives at this exhibition. It is my release."

One's heaviest burden is always oneself. The black box is the final juncture, beyond which point you either achieve freedom or not, because all that is precious and unforgettable will be forsaken; it comes from a certain gradually accumulating paradise lost. The black box is also the key as to whether a generation can attain freedom. It requires massive courage for people to face the black box, and it is the artist's responsibility to try to understand it. Good works are inseparable from it. Tim Yip expresses the solitude of existence through visual images, and he has never ceased his search for reality. By constantly facing the self and the world, he reveals his real state of mind, which becomes lighter and lighter, more and more powerful.

At the end, Tim Yip titled this exhibition Illusions of Silence, in the hope to find a new, progressive language with which to go on. "You would rarely think of the situations that I created in my works. To juxtapose things with entirely different orientations is my way of thinking and making art," Yip explains. Illusions of Silence is Tim Yip's creative meditation in a level-headed state of mind, and is also an untitled title. Through this characterless title, the viewer is bound to experience an even more powerful impact, and reach any one of all the possibilities.