Four Stanzas of a Poem
(PRINT: 25x31 inch, offset print, 40 editions, 1993)
In 1993, I held a solo exhibition titled Thirty-one Photographs at the Hong Kong Arts Centre gallery. All the original works on display were C41 color photographs, except for one—a unique offset print titled Four Stanzas of a Poem, measuring 25x31 inches.
Earlier that year, I collaborated with designer Lilian Tang to create an oversized company brochure for an art paper distributor. The piece in the exhibition was, in fact, one of the original pages from that promotional material. It features an enlarged handwritten Chinese text of mine, which, in a way, reflects my thoughts on circular objects. I also placed it at the opening of the exhibition catalogue. Later, it was included as one of the poems in the publication Ten Poets Anthology. The title, Four Stanzas of a Poem, metaphorically refers to the four circular objects in the image.
The text reads:
"I was discussing with a friend the relationship between a river and its water. Our conversation touched on Duchamp, particularly his views on readymades. An object and its environment are like a fish and the river it swims in—you can’t simply separate the two. This later led me to appreciate more of Barbara Kruger. A graphic designer joined the discussion and asked about the concept of recycling images. I explained that transforming a piece of rock into a photograph, or turning a photograph of a rock back into a piece of rock, is simply a matter of sequence. After that, we didn’t delve deeply into the concept of heaviness. I thought he must have seen Magritte, so when I mentioned René, I assumed he would recognize René’s pipe, even though I had left out the title of Magritte’s work. And so, we circled back to the original question of the river and its water.”
1993年，我在藝術中心畫廊的個展「Thirty-one Photographs」，所展出的原作照片均為C41彩色照片，只有一張例外，是以柯式印刷的原作。25x31吋，題目是「詩之四節」。在該年較早的時候，我與設計師Lilian Tang合作為一美術紙代理公司設計了一份極大開度的公司簡介冊子。這個作品其實就是該宣傳物的其中一頁原件。版面有我手寫的一段中文文字放大。這段文字某程度也可說是我對旋轉物的看法。我把這段文字放在我個展的展品冊子卷首。後來，這段文字也變身成為及後出版的「十人詩選」裡的一首詩。題目「詩之四節」(Four Stanzas of a Poem) 泛指圖中的四枚圓形物。文本如下「我和一位朋友討論着關於河水和河流的問題，我提到了杜象。特別是他關於對現成物的看法。物象和它存在時空的關係，像一尾泳在河床上的魚，你總不能夠單獨地將一件事抽離。這也是我後來開始喜歡巴巴拉古嘉的原因。一位設計師加入來討論問到為甚麼叫輪環使用影像的概念，我說將一塊石變成一張石的照片和將一張石的照片變成一塊石是一個先後次序的問題。之後，我再沒有和他深入討論關於重量的種種猜想。我想他一定看過馬格列特，所以，當我說到馬我想他是撇掉了馬的題目也一定懂得馬的煙斗。這樣，又回到我們剛才談到河水和河的問題。」