Early Works 早期作品

Early Works

Ku’s paintings open up a new dimension in humanity’s perception of consciousness and spacetime. The artist’s experimental method stretches representation from three-dimensional space into four-dimensional spacetime, even bringing together multiple dimensions — a prescient vision already evident in his work in the early 1990s.

To appreciate the artist’s epoch-making insights, the viewer must journey back to the late 1980s and early 1990’s. It was an era still awaiting invention: computers were rarely employed in artistic creation, the age of digitized images had not yet dawned, and human visual experience was comparatively direct, singular, and static. These conditions of perception shaped the contemporary understanding of space.

During this period, Ku’s habit of repeatedly painting over a canvas and erasing previous layers produced a palimpsest of translucent strata. This led to his technique of creating diaphanous coatings that, on an ostensibly still surface, conjure up after-images and a sense of motion.

Organic forms and symbols fade out and reappear; the traces of their displacement linger. Massive blocks advance toward the viewer, ushering us into a rugged realm of abstraction.
At that time, these visual innovations were nothing short of radical — both for Ku’s own ground-breaking trajectory and for people’s viewing experience.

谷氏畫作為人對意識及時空的理解提供新的面向。藝術家表達手法上作出實驗性的嘗試：從三維空間推展到四維時空，甚至是多維空間聚集，都反映谷氏的創作早於90年代已有高瞻遠足的洞見。

觀者或許需要穿越視覺文化歷史，回到80年代末至90年代初，才能設身處地理解藝術家劃時代的洞見：那是一切尚待發展的時期，藝術創作對電腦的應用並不普及，而圖像數碼化的時代尚未來臨，人的視覺經驗相對直接、單一、靜止，這些觀看經驗上的條件和限制都在形塑人類對空間概念的理解。其時谷敏昭因在畫布上重覆塗改畫面的習慣讓畫作出現透疊效果，隨之發展而成的透薄塗層技法，在靜態的畫布上呈現出重影和動態效果，有機物和符號的淡出與再現、位移留下的軌跡，龐大的體塊在畫面於前方引領觀者進入雄渾的抽象領域，種種視覺效果的推進，在當時看來，不論對谷氏的創作歷程，或是對人的觀看經驗來說都是激進的突破。