吉甌、楊承運、楊朝喬 、劉耀斌

Gio, YANG Cheng-Yun, YANG Chao Ciao, LIU Yao Pin

Edge of Memory captures the light and shadow of the moments between where human civilization came from and what it has become. A cautionary tale is embedded amidst the prosody of the whisper beneath the images, coaxing the viewers to reflect on their own interpretation of the hidden metaphors, and they may question themselves: Are we seeing the darkness or the light?
Still and moving, the forms and patterns in this curated body of work by four Taiwanese photographers, 吉甌 Gio , 楊承運 YANG Cheng-Yun, 楊朝喬 YANG Chao Ciao, 劉耀斌 LIU Yao Pin, weave an untold story of boundaries: the sunset casting against a forgotten place, ripples and the stain that became the filter where sunlight goes through, the trace of the wave, and the signs of wind. Each of these moments is reimagined in clusters as if they were sentences. Each column or stripe dances to one another as though they were incoherent verses having a dialogue. They reveal the grammar behind the composition, asking the viewers, to themselves, which are the punctuations and which are the verbs.
The more a viewer wanders their eyes through this visual dialogue, the more they are evoked by a deep examination into a faraway memory of their own. These verses are seemingly expressing the before, after, and in-between of becoming. Between the day-to-day scenes, where a viewer locates themselves is an unconventional imagery in the modern day landscape. What is deemed to be queer or unfitting is often the truest expression of life, as it is calling for the greatest potential of a human’s liveliness.
The natural sceneries are suggesting that the forgotten and mundane might have a greater message about life than what capitalization, standardization, and formality can inform us. Through the language behind the images, the photographers ask the viewers to rethink what is most close to who they are. Is it the lotus pond behind the fence or the room inside the iron window that protects them? And what are the lines that take us apart? Are they the destroyed tracks after an earthquake or a spoken but unheard voice? Like how the same pattern can signify a trap or liberation, it is one’s own choice of what to see in each incident that is brought to us in life.
Edge of Memory as though composes a flashback of a life journey, bringing about all the most pressing and humane questions: Stay or go? Change or remain the same?