A fictional Li(f)e?
The first addictive part of this show is its entrance. To enter the exhibition, you need to walk in between the rusty red "walls", the same color as the outer walls of Tibetan Buddhist monasteries. When I was entering the narrow passageway between the walls and found the rusty red "walls" in contact with the body were pieces of thick paper painted with rusty red watercolor, I not only felt being spoofed by Mr. Lynton's image on his Instagram, but at the same time, I realized that above my head there were also pieces of paper - light, thin, and white. The paper covered the whole ceiling, defusing light.
As I learned in my sophomore year, there are two kinds of lies that correspond to two truths and one is a historical lie, for a false description of an event; the other is a philosophical lie. Historical lies may have philosophical truth. For example, a powerful minister might not have actually put the knife on the neck of the king he served; however, when writing the history, the writer put down that this man killed his king, and the reader know it was true.
In this interior setting without windows facing outdoors, with depressing "light" and "white color", there are several "windows." Audiences in the exhibition were like pinballs in airtight plastic boxes, hitting “something” intermittently, and bounce from that “something”. In this pinball’s path I saw a black, sturdy horse on a black background, a whisper over London, a black and white photograph of a little girl staring at me, a baseball standing on the batting tee but stuck in a white marble gum with teeth, disturbing. Others are double-sided mirrors: two frames suspended back to back.
Black figures at the corner of the exhibition wall look a little "cartoon", not in tune, and the ceiling paper reminds me of Japanese house interior. In such a closed space looking at the screen in the corner showing London, the cityscape is only the size of the screen, and then take a few steps, the human figures on canvas are the same size with the people in real life- the viewer, I, or we.
Once again into the rusty red walls, people meet suddenly. Why do they come to this gallery in East London on such a winter rainy evening? Or would they think so too, and why "she", I, would come here in East London on a rainy winter's day. Oh this rusty red only allows one person to pass.
More than a week after I came to the show, I learned that this exhibition was titled Li(f)e. Life is a lie? Or the truths are but fictional. Was I truly in the context of Li(f)e? Or am I still lost in its paper entrance?
