Depiction：
Wei Tzuyu's "Consciousness Transfer IV": Painting as a Sea of Life of Virtual Images
Among the various creative forms that respond to mechanical civilization and media issues, "Hyperrealism" paintings show a deep connection with the artist's body and visual experience. In terms of physical experience, the creator depicts realistic images like a camera or other equipment, and in terms of visual experience, he ponders the philosophical imagination that "simulated things never exist in reality." This form of creation has developed in the West since the 1970s, and has also taken on a unique development trajectory in Taiwan. It is still a creative method practiced by many young artists. As for the artist Wei Ziyu, on the one hand, he inherits the hyper-realistic creative techniques to depict the products of contemporary anime culture. On the other hand, he uses extremely realistic brushstrokes to depict the fantasy space, replacing various anime characters in his own inner world, and then transforming them into some kind of private emotions, achieving a more delicate and microscopic self-examination. In the exhibition "Consciousness Transfer IV" to be held at Nichidai Art in September, Wei Ziyu will use this creative context and concept to interpret the method of imaging technology, further highlighting the unique relationship between painting, virtual environment and doll characters (キャラクター, abbreviated as キャラ, Kyara).
In the imagination of the communication geek McLuhan, new media will use old media as content to aggregate more powerful information energy to stimulate the viewer. For example, text continues to appear in subsequent print and television, and there is even a saying that "film is a variation of text." Imaging technology also continues to move from static to dynamic, and even virtual reality. If we observe today's media society, we can see that it is continuing to move forward in line with his predictions. Internet media encompasses text, images, sounds and moving images. The subsequent social media has also included traditional media, to a certain extent even leading to a situation where content produced by old media sometimes needs to rely on social media operations to be promoted. Under the principles of antitrust and fair trade, there has even been a heated dispute over the distribution of benefits between the two. In this era of intense media convergence, the creative methods of hyperrealist painters seem to go against the grain: they try to interpret and simulate new imaging technologies through the most primitive media and techniques. In the past, it was flat photography, but now it may be any slice of digital simulated space. Wei Ziyu's work may be one of the interesting examples.
In my opinion, the works published by Wei Ziyu in September this year should be the culmination of the theme of キャラ. Around 2014, he successively published the "in glass" series, which depicted realistic paintings of various common Japanese cartoons or various character dolls. He used a circular fish tank to construct a heterogeneous space similar to a space capsule, allowing these virtual characters to float in it, as if outside the respective plot spaces of these characters, there is a symbolic universe that unifies everything and silently dominates all discourse contexts. After that, Wei Ziyu began his creative process of studying 3D flat images. He first depicted an image with overlapping red and blue afterimages through painting. Then, when the viewer put on 3D glasses with red and blue lenses, the image on the screen would have a three-dimensional sense due to the visual difference. Under such practice, we can clearly see that the artist does not simply regard his body as a medium for practicing and reproducing hyper-realistic images. He even stacked up the imagination of visual technology through painting, which has always been regarded as a traditional medium, and thus allowed "hyper-realism" to break away from the rut of simply depicting appearances.
In such hyperrealism paintings that imitate virtual real images, the meaning of "Hyper" is further highlighted. In addition to painting techniques, the concept of the "Human Instrumentality Project" from the Japanese anime "Neon Genesis Evangelion" is quoted, believing that if humans are to be able to eliminate the walls of their hearts between people and achieve the ultimate evolution of humanity. There is also a hidden purpose behind this, which is to attempt to atone for sins through the extinction of mankind, and eventually his body will turn into a source of water, the most primitive form of life, and eventually become a "Sea of LCL". Under Wei Ziyu's arrangement, most of the paintings this time are based on the theme of a bloody sea, bringing this imagination from anime philosophy to life. What’s interesting is that in this series, he placed many anime characters that he had quoted in the past and made them float in the “LCL Sea”, which is both a metaphor for the end and the beginning of life. In it, a new character was born, created by the artist himself and inspired by the character of Char from “Mobile Suit Gundam”. In this story, Char is a character who comes from a colony planet and hopes to turn the tables and take over his home planet. Wei Ziyu uses his helmet to recreate a new character in the form of a baby, symbolizing the rebirth of a new species after mass death. He also combines it with painting, making and exhibiting doll sculptures, responding to the current commercial art mechanism through the form of consumer goods in the animation industry.
In summary, Wei Ziyu's works in this exhibition, on the one hand, use virtual 3D imaging technology in painting, and on the other hand, use the collage and reconstruction of various animation content plots to metaphorically represent the interactive relationship between new and old media. If "Sea of LCL" shows the original state of human beings returning to the fountain of life, then the artist's series of artistic practices actually also shows that painting is the fundamental source of all virtual imaging technology. The core of the hyperrealistic painting concept "simulated things never exist in reality" is actually clearly expressed in this process.
