Artists

Nai-Jen Yang

Press release

Something close to music[i]

…from repeating to herself some few of the thousand poetical descriptions extant of autumn, that season of peculiar and inexhaustible influence on the mind of taste and tenderness, that season which has drawn from every poet, worthy of being read, some attempt at description, or some lines of feeling.[ii]

…at the midpoint of this text, looking out at the mid-morning sky, I am reminded that we are witnessing a seasonal shift, gliding in slow increments, passing through the midwinter bite, into awakening spring. Each morning we are greeted by new growth emerging on the windowsill ledge — a dwarf narcissus, Rip Van Winkle, fanning out its semi-transparent, miniaturised tendrils. Daily movements are punctuated by hues of rejuvenation – voluminous violets, silvers and whites, buttered yellows ever-so-lightly caress the ground yet last but a moment. Nature’s tender flashes delight the amenable, and yet, as easily can pass by unknowingly or, depending on the time of day, get swallowed beneath the blanket of grey.
‘…let us remember them constantly, whether to observe them, or to augment them.’[iii]

You may wonder to what extent, of sensation or occupation, the above brings to the conversation of Taiwanese-born-now-London-based, Nai-Jen Yang’s practice. The simple answer is that of place and the quality of noticing it. Whether acknowledging, or moreover privileging, the simple marvels and textures of daily life, Nai-Jen Yang, consciously places the poetic and the transportable streams – or rather inexhaustible sense and sensibilities of our earth’s natural and temporal turns – into plain sight. Swinging from here and there but never approaching anything (subject nor context) directly, Nai-Jen Yang driftingly, like cloud formations, hints toward the subtle shifts of lightness, darkness, stillness and silence; probing the light that cascades on the horizon or at a season’s edge.

Nai-Jen Yang, it seems, has imposed or proposed a hypothesis that what is seen is at the same time heard… For her exhibition at mother’s tankstation London, Yang, quietly alludes and pivots to a musical conclusion; xi xi su su – an onomatopoeic sound translated to English, referencing a rustling noise, (a succession or procession? of soft, small, whispering sounds, like that of dry leaves) – suggestively paralleling the ebbs and flows of ambient sounds. The relationship between each precise and produced ingredient combines into a distinct frequency, gesture, rhythm or repeat. A sort-of synaesthesia arguably, whereby sound becomes indistinguishable from sight, thus sight becomes indistinguishable from sound.