This is the Map of Hopelessness. After a long struggle I decided to move out from the dorm, but I could not find apartment to stay, nor any name that would pop up in my head to ask letting me to stay. As I walked along the streets, every laughter and smile seemed so unfriendly loud and cold-bloodedly ironic.
This is a unbalanced composition and with its asymmetrical composition, it adds a sense of unstableness to the visual effect. It has multiple focus points: the smiling grandma on the left top, the gloomy old Shanghai lady at the bottom right, and the random blank spaces. And by having multiple focus points, audience will have no focus point at the same time that will bring up the theme of hopelessness. The photos of figures are placed horizontally but the black ink tears and differences in sizes are breaking up this repetitive pattern, putting the unstable into the stable. The ironic composition of putting black tears onto smiling people adds up the taste of hopelessness: walking on the street of one of the most crowded city yet feeling as one of the most lonely creature. The roughness of the photo-cutting also adds to the mood of the composition as well as the mixed color of the figures.
This is a Map of Nightmare which is a dream of a man and a dog. During the entire dream, there is nothing but a murmuring of a male voice saying he will be gone. He lives in a dog’s dream: his dog’s dream. And he is panicked and frightened that the dog will wake up. And he will be existed no more.
This is a mostly balanced composition: it is designed to be symmetrical but it is loosely structured. The color choice is as neat as possible: black clip, white cotton swabs and tissues. With soft tissues creating a bed-like comfort, and swabs creating a triangular space representing the concreteness and safeness, the sharp black clip seems to break this harmony and bringing in its danger. Yet as a whole, the clip melts into the composition some how, giving the piece a new form of unity and rhythm.
