Karen Jiang 

Upon first glance, the painting dissolves into blueness. Upon closer examination, fine white lines emerge from seemingly light traces of water on canvas. These lines create a time capsule—a memory of a memory in water, a shadow of what once was observed. Water is never still—its movement approaching and receding along the shoreline can be likened to the inhale and exhale of a breath. This analogy is physically realised in the technique employed: each line is painted with the exhale of a single breath; in time, an accumulation of imperceptible marks form. In the clarity of silica sediment, large quantities of water can be imagined to have once submerged these grounds, to have lived through high and low tides with every rotation around the sun. Water that once filled the space now ceases to be seen. What is seen in the mind as opposed to what is not seen in the mind is inverted to what is physically viewed and not viewed: what is present is sediment, not water, yet what is felt is water, not sediment. This water lies outside the canvas suggesting a larger space than what is presented, much like how this element fits into a context broader than what we can imagine tangibly. Inherently, the essence and structure of water is difficult to understand—by peeling back the layers of sediment, the process is likened to the peeling back of a tree’s bark to reveal its inner structure. Temporality, circulation, and flow become, then, suggested spatial qualities that reaffirm its elusive existence.