The Topography of Absence
The Asian American Art Centre
Curated by Katarina Wong
Nov 19 - Dec 31 2004

Topography traditionally maps a land for the purpose of making it understandable and navigable. Through topography, one can “read” a landscape, making known what was previously unknown through a series of relationships and contexts. But as a form of mapping, topographies can be used to chart any realm of the unknown or unseen, not merely of the “natural” world.

In this exhibition, artists delve into a different kind of world, the landscape of absence made up by the overlooked actions, impulses and accumulations of our daily existence. Steven Gwon, Amy Kao, Shin il Kim, Cynthia Lin, and Lisa Young use their work as a means of studying the topography of their lives, and in it, find those “absences” to be a kind of fullness instead. I have chosen work that allows us to experience unexpected wonder in the very mundanity of our lives.

Formally, this exhibition, upon first glance, may seem almost absent. Each of the artists works either completely in white or so delicately, that the pieces require a second glance to fully be appreciated. Inspiration is found in seemingly mundane experiences or what’s leftover from them: whether it’s drawing based on lint and dust; fortunes collected over the years from fortune cookies to create a kind of “found” poetry; the action of noticing the sun’s rising and setting captured in drawings of undulating patterns; the act of repeated prostration recreated as a minimal video or camouflage-based installation that reveals as much as it conceals.

Each of these artists argues for shifting attention to small gestures and overlooked patterns as a means of coming closer to their essences. They remind us that there are worlds to be discovered, even in the most mundane of our experiences. What seems to be absence may actually be filled with meaning and wonder.

In this exhibition, topography is not only used to describe the physical world, but is an attempt to create a context for the seemingly random ephemera in our lives.