Postcard image for 《Stress Fighter》 © Alternative Space Pool

Stress, for the most part, may be said to originate from one’s own internal state. In other words, the cause of stress lies not so much in the external “situation itself,” but rather in the attitude through which it is received and interpreted.

One way of relieving stress may be found in casual conversation—idle chatter. Through gossip, small talk, and the sharing of trivial personal concerns, people speak about their stress and, in the very act of speaking, release it.

In this way, freed from the burden of political armor that accompanies public evaluation and the responsibility of official statements, we are able—through the everydayness inherent in casual conversation—to examine not only the stresses we presently experience, but also the many dimensions of our minor and intimate concerns.

Until now, the thematic exhibitions organized by Alternative Space Pool in 2007 primarily addressed discourses surrounding East Asian regions and histories, or questions related to the city and the public sphere. Here, however, the exhibition attempts to position the microscopic perspective of the individual—embodied through casual conversation—within the place traditionally occupied by public discourse.

In place of channels through which social discourse has conventionally circulated, fragmented and everyday personal channels allow us to reconsider even the habitual language and rhetoric long taken for granted. The act of speaking through “chatter” resists fixed form, and for that very reason can begin from questioning the system itself.

Just as an artist’s personal history and social position are never entirely discontinuous, the seemingly private content of casual conversation likewise cannot be separated from broader social narratives. Through the methodological pointillism of “chatter,” the participating artists ultimately speak to the realities of society itself.


Installation view of 《Stress Fighter》 © Alternative Space Pool

In the exhibition 《Stress Fighter》, the participating artists address the inevitable forms of stress that arise from questions surrounding the context and justification of artistic practice itself.

At times, the subject matter of painting, or even the methods and media of production, become obsessive sources of pressure. The artists reveal and release such stress through works that deliberately deviate from established contexts and conventions.

Stress and its causes are further perceived and interpreted as images or icons, exposing and intersecting both generalized forms of stress already embedded within society and the more personal anxieties confronting the artists’ own lives. The layering produced through this concentrated focus on specific subjects ultimately functions as a means of neutralizing and dissipating stress itself.

This heterogeneous form of pointillism remains unfinished and ambiguous, like repeatedly revised pencil sketches serving as an underdrawing for how contemporary society may be perceived. Yet it is precisely through this incompleteness that the exhibition proposes a method for revealing multiple perspectives on present reality—an attempt, ultimately, to depict the many different faces of the world as they are.

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