微塵與日暈：藝術家創作自述
文｜陳睿淵
今年是我來到台灣的第18個年頭，恰好佔據了我至今一半年歲。在這對分的歷程中，一半在充滿英國殖民時期老房舍、綠茵遍佈的馬來西亞南部河口小城；一半則四散在台灣各地。
家中經營建築事務所，建築是我成長過程中熟悉的事物之一，也是我感知周遭的媒介。當年，初來乍到高樓林立的台中，觸目所及皆是繁瑣而雜亂的人造建物、川流的車輛、以及炫目的燈光。日子就在中部大量的落塵中，週而復始地積累，成為了我在台生活的基調、也成了創作的質地。在彼時疏離的視線中，所有景物彷彿隔著一層恍惚的灰色濾鏡。那些無可迴避的繁瑣日常景色，透過疲憊且失焦的視野轉化到紙上，形成了帶有距離感的水平風景，也成了我創作的開端「蜃景」系列中，那些海市蜃樓般無法企及的大氣幻象：可以遠眺，卻無法真正走進其中。
後來，在全台由北至南、由西到東頻繁地搬遷與走訪之下，隨著不安定感一同積累的，是對不同地區風土樣貌的在地體驗。正當我自認似乎開始真正走進這片土地時，生活中不時冒出的異地感，又將我拉回既熟悉又陌生的狀態；而這樣的狀態，在我回到故鄉期間也越發明顯。小城鎮在發展，雅緻老房舍也在拆除改建，樣板式的建築四處增殖。隨著時間的推移，我也接受了這種異地與故鄉邊界的模糊與未明。生活在任何一處地方對我而言似乎都不是理所當然，或許不確定就是常態。
既然不論何處，生活周邊一切環境景物都並非理所當然，我開始探究它們究竟經歷了怎樣的變遷，才成為今天的樣貌。那是經過了多少時間的涓滴、人的來去與各種大小變動，才沉降而成如今這個看似無可動搖、被稱為「風土」的結果。《金剛經》談微塵眾，世界不過是無數微塵暫時的聚合；我們所經驗的一切，或許也是如此。既然在宏觀的尺度下一切都處於必然變動的逕流中，在生活被麻木與慣性推進的同時，那些自生活中喚醒我的小片段，不論是讓人驚奇的、敬畏的、得以歇息的、或是感到異質的，就顯得格外真切。奇幻的雲朵霞光、巨大得讓人莫名畏懼的建築工事、或是反覆經歷的日常景色中的某個瞬間，它們在我漫不經心的鈍化感知中偶然閃現，切身且具揭示性；在不安與變動的空虛中提供我小小樂趣之餘，似乎也讓我在這片土地上，更能確切地抓住些什麼。
生活中細小如塵埃的碎片，沉降後究竟會形成什麼？又能從中看出什麼？如同日暈的形成，是在萬米高空的卷層雲裡，由無數細碎微小的冰晶折射而成的大氣光環，或許透過生活中這些不經意的小片段折射，我反而得以窺看土地的樣貌，以及自己如何在其中落腳。
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Artist Statement for Dust and Halo
by Tan Jui-Wen
This year marks my eighteenth year in Taiwan, exactly half of my life so far. The other half was spent in a small town by an estuary in southern Malaysia, surrounded by old houses from the British colonial era and abundant greenery. My years in Taiwan, by contrast, have been scattered across many different places.
My family runs an architectural firm, so architecture was a familiar part of my childhood and became one of the ways I learned to perceive my surroundings. When I first arrived in Taichung, I found myself surrounded by high rises, dense and cluttered buildings, streams of traffic, and glaring lights. Day after day, life repeated itself amid the seemingly endless settling dust of central Taiwan. Both time and dust accumulated, gradually becoming the underlying tone of my life here and the texture of my work.
At the time, I viewed everything with a sense of distance. The world seemed to be covered by a hazy grey filter. The inescapable clutter of everyday life was transformed through my tired and unfocused vision onto paper, becoming horizontal landscapes held at a distance. This marked the beginning of my Mirage series, where these scenes took on the quality of atmospheric illusions, like mirages that could be seen from afar but never truly entered.
Later, I moved and travelled frequently across Taiwan, from north to south and west to east. Alongside a growing sense of instability came a more direct experience of the landscapes, climates, and everyday character of different places. Just as I began to feel that I was finally entering more deeply into this land, moments of unfamiliarity would surface again, returning me to a state in which everything felt both familiar and strange. I began to feel the same way when I returned to my hometown. The small town was changing. Elegant old houses were being demolished or rebuilt, while standardised buildings appeared one after another. Over time, I came to accept this blurred and uncertain boundary between being away and being at home. Living anywhere no longer feels entirely self evident to me. Perhaps uncertainty itself is the constant.
Once I stopped taking the places around me for granted, I began to wonder what changes they had undergone to arrive at their present form. How much time, how many people passing through, and how many changes large and small had accumulated before settling into what now seems stable enough to be called the character of a place?
The Diamond Sutra speaks of the world as a temporary gathering of countless particles of dust. Perhaps everything we experience is much the same. On a larger scale, everything is inevitably caught in a continuous process of change. Yet while everyday life moves forward through habit and numbness, certain small moments have the power to wake me from it. They may bring surprise, awe, rest, or a sudden sense of strangeness, but each feels unusually vivid.
A fantastic cloud lit by the evening sky, a construction project so immense that it evokes an unnameable fear, or a fleeting moment within a scene I have passed countless times. These things suddenly break through my dulled, distracted perception and feel closely connected to my own experience, while revealing something I had not noticed before. Within the emptiness born of unease and constant change, they offer me small moments of pleasure. At the same time, they seem to give me something more tangible to hold on to within this land.
What do the smallest fragments of life become once they have settled like dust? What might they allow us to see?
A halo forms when countless tiny ice crystals in cirrostratus clouds, thousands of metres above the ground, refract light into a ring across the sky. Perhaps the unnoticed fragments of everyday life work in a similar way. Through their refraction, I begin to glimpse the shape of the land around me, and to understand how I might find my own place within it.
