"Red Silhouette Rear Window"
// BLURB //
To watch is not always to intrude. Sometimes it is simply to notice. The 1950s film “Rear Window” reminds us that surveillance can be a form of longing, a quiet admission that other lives glow just beyond our reach. From a distance, everything becomes deliberate: a gesture framed by glass, a shadow moving across a wall, a room washed briefly in red light at dusk. The color red lingers like a signal, desire, danger, attention, impossible to ignore, even when you pretend not to look. There is pleasure in partial knowledge. The unseen completes the seen. Ancient Chinese thinkers understood this well. Laozi wrote that what is useful is often what is empty; the space inside the room, the silence between words. Watching from afar, we learn not through possession but through restraint. We do not enter; we observe. And in doing so, we imagine. Spying here is not conquest, but curiosity. A soft choreography of eyes and windows, of bodies unaware and minds alert. The philosopher Zhuangzi might say that perspective is everything: change your position, and the truth reshapes itself.
To watch is not always to intrude. Sometimes it is simply to notice. The 1950s film “Rear Window” reminds us that surveillance can be a form of longing, a quiet admission that other lives glow just beyond our reach. From a distance, everything becomes deliberate: a gesture framed by glass, a shadow moving across a wall, a room washed briefly in red light at dusk. The color red lingers like a signal, desire, danger, attention, impossible to ignore, even when you pretend not to look. There is pleasure in partial knowledge. The unseen completes the seen. Ancient Chinese thinkers understood this well. Laozi wrote that what is useful is often what is empty; the space inside the room, the silence between words. Watching from afar, we learn not through possession but through restraint. We do not enter; we observe. And in doing so, we imagine. Spying here is not conquest, but curiosity. A soft choreography of eyes and windows, of bodies unaware and minds alert. The philosopher Zhuangzi might say that perspective is everything: change your position, and the truth reshapes itself.
Behind every window is a story unfolding without you. Yet somehow, by watching, you become part of it, held at a distance, suspended between intimacy and anonymity, where desire remains unresolved, and therefore alive.
EDITION, MEDIA, SIZE & WEIGHT
One-of-a-kind work, issued as a unique edition
Shanghai 2025
TFT display, media player, IR sensor, acrylic painting on Plexiglass, Vietnamese linen embedded in hand cast resin, teakwood frame
120(W)×120(H)×6(D) cm // 46 kg
CRATE SIZE & WEIGHT
132(W)×132(H)×21(D) cm // 86.9 kg
EXPOSURE
“The Fourth Wall” at island6 Shanghai
CREDITS
Wang Chuanwen 王传文 (painting) • Yang Suer 杨素儿 (performance) • Helen Chen 陈韵涵 (director of photography) • Yeung Sin Ching 杨倩菁 (production supervisor) • Thomas Charvériat (art direction) • Tiara Alvarado-Leon (blurb)
One-of-a-kind work, issued as a unique edition
Shanghai 2025
TFT display, media player, IR sensor, acrylic painting on Plexiglass, Vietnamese linen embedded in hand cast resin, teakwood frame
120(W)×120(H)×6(D) cm // 46 kg
CRATE SIZE & WEIGHT
132(W)×132(H)×21(D) cm // 86.9 kg
EXPOSURE
“The Fourth Wall” at island6 Shanghai
CREDITS
Wang Chuanwen 王传文 (painting) • Yang Suer 杨素儿 (performance) • Helen Chen 陈韵涵 (director of photography) • Yeung Sin Ching 杨倩菁 (production supervisor) • Thomas Charvériat (art direction) • Tiara Alvarado-Leon (blurb)
CLOSE-UPS
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