(2023, November 12)
Material:
Shadow (2023, November 12)
Birch
Staplers
Wood glue
Liquitex White Gesso
Crayola 12ct Chalk Multicolor
Krylon Workable Fixatif
Photographer: Yao Deng
I love shadows. I don't know if you can sympathize with this sense. After I filled up my second sketchbook in 2020 with black ink, I realized for the first time that I love shadows. Snaky lines of a street white birch and cross straight lines of a power line overlap on the rough textured outer wall. When I see such a scene, it makes me want to take a picture. To understand why I am attracted to shadows, I did some research on shadows. Psychology, literature, philosophy, and religion use shadows as metaphors, like Plato's Allegory of the Cave, or symbols of duality, like Yin-yang philosophy. Still, few studies or writings approach shadows as a subject from a cultural anthropological perspective. And in many cases, shadow is spoken of as an antonym to light. Even in high school physics, I sometimes calculated about light on exam papers but never did it for shadow.
Shadow is elusive, literally. So, I tried to provide a value to shadow itself.
Two summers ago, I visited St. Peter's Basilica. It was a monotheistic structure, but I saw a something evolutionary view. After I paid the admission fee and passed through the gate, I arrived at the square in front of the cathedral. Despite the long line of tourists behind the gate, the number of tourists’ silhouettes was unexpectedly small once inside. Looking around, I saw several hundred tourists standing in the shadows of pillars and walls, avoiding the sun. After spending an hour looking around inside the cathedral, I returned to the square. Then I noticed that the arrangement of the tourists had changed from an hour ago. The sun had moved to the west and the shape of the shadow over the square had changed, And the people unconsciously changed their positions accordingly. I was reminded of a view of a herd of lions on the savanna, resting breathlessly in the shade of an acacia tree on Discovery Channel. In Norway, where daylight hours are short, the value of the sun is great, and it can have an economic impact. But in the Vatican in July, people cannot live without shadows.
Just as candles and light bulbs are tools for generating light, roofs and beach parasols were created as tools for generating shadows. In shadow, we create light. In light, we create shadows. Some people think that shadows are created because there is light. However, from a different perspective, the countless light bulbs of polka-dot-like stars can be thought of as shining in the shadow of something enormous object. Shadows are creatures shaped by the sun's energy, the tilt of the earth's axis, and Earth's rotation and revolution. Animals move, trees grow, landscapes are destroyed and rebuilt, and shadows are born and disappear as if following them.In many cases, shadows are recognized as "just there" and disappear.
