Art Criticism ▍More than itself: A Review of Lai Chih-Sheng’s Solo Exhibition “Clearing”

FIG. 1 Poster of “Clearing” (Photo courtesy of the artist).

Apart from a few subtle traces, Taiwanese artist Lai Chih-Sheng’s recent solo exhibition “Clearing” at TheCube Project Space candidly presents the “exhibition space” itself as the primary content. Besides this, the empty exhibition space contains almost nothing else.①

At first glance, this seems to reaffirm the inherent exhaustion of contemporary art and once again validates Jean Baudrillard’s pessimistic view on the fate of art. As he puts it in his work, The Conspiracy of Art, “Art is therefore destined to simulate its own disappearance, since it has already taken place.”② On the other hand, even if we try, for the moment, to consider “absence” as a theme of artistic exploration and rigorously examine it within the context of art history — similar to “Invisible: Art about the Unseen” at Hayward Gallery in London, the 2012 exhibition Lai Chih-Sheng once participated in, which mapped out a complete evolution of “invisible art” from 1957 to 2012 — both approaches to analyzing Lai Chih-Sheng’s work would still overly simplify his creative methodology and overlook the core aspects that the artist has truly engaged with and focused on throughout his long career.

Critiques of Lai Chih-Sheng’s work often focus on his ability to intervene in existing spaces, his minimalist style, and the occasional presence of performative elements. This interpretive approach tends to view “space” as an independent external entity, unrelated to personal emotions, leading to a misunderstanding of the artist’s minimal intervention in space as a vain homage to “modernist ideas.” In reality, this common misunderstanding of Lai Chih-Sheng’s work happens to be the very difference between his practice and that of other artistic predecessors who have employed similar methods — such as Yves Klein’s 1958 exhibition “The Void” at Iris Clert Gallery. Lai Chih-Sheng’s “Clearing” is not an attempt at vacuous conceptual art; rather, it is a concrete response to a specific “mechanism.” In other words, his approach clearly demonstrates a conscious engagement with site-specificity.

For instance, “Clearing,” the title of the exhibition, refers not only to the artist’s serial actions of cleaning, organizing, and repainting within the space, but also refers to “TheCube Project Space” itself, an independent institution that has supported over 70 exhibitions in nearly 15 years since its establishment in 2010. This might explain why the choice to use this term coincidentally resonates with Martin Heidegger’s concept of “Clearing” (Lichtung), which, in its simplest sense, is a space where things that were previously hidden become visible — a “space that allows things to happen.”③

FIG. 2 Contour Lines in “Clearing” (Photo courtesy of the artist).

Coinciding with its 15th anniversary, TheCube Project Space recently launched a crowdfunding campaign due to the operational pressures of “increasingly reduced government subsidies and adjustments in private donations.” Due to the design of the crowdfunding platform’s mechanism, if the total amount raised does not meet the target by the deadline, all donations will be refunded to the individual donors. This could even directly impact TheCube Project Space’s short-term prospects, making it a true “all-or-nothing” gamble. Such a precarious operational decision starkly reveals the current state and challenges faced by independent spaces in Taiwan, and exposes the hidden infrastructure behind the glamorous art industry — staffing, funding, administration, policy, space maintenance, and other hidden costs. This also highlights a core aspect of Lai Chih-Sheng’s long-term creative career: invisible labor.

Lai Chih-Sheng’s interest in invisible labor may be related to his own life experiences. In his youth, he worked as a plasterer for 15 years and also took on odd jobs at a billiards hall to earn some extra money. After graduating from art school, he founded a multimedia company to handle filming work and projects in the art industry, employing young artists around him who were still finding their footing and allowing them to maintain a basic livelihood while pursuing their creative work. With over thirty years of career experience in the arts, Lai Chih-Sheng might be the person who best understands “what truly supports creation,” and he might also be the artist who pays the most attention to the infrastructure behind the art industry.

I often say that Lai Chih-Sheng’s works are better suited for art professionals to appreciate. Although many lay audiences also like his style, which seems to be pretty accessible, in reality, it is necessary to understand the mechanisms of the art industry in order to truly grasp the artistic decisions he makes. His works always carry an element of institutional critique, but do not provoke intense opposition. They are not sarcastic, ironic, or bitter; instead, they offer a gentle critique imbued with a touch of incisiveness. This approach does not require complex dialectical processes, but instead prompts audience reflection under certain, chance circumstances.

In recent years, some younger artists who missed the “Nation Oxygen” era have occasionally been critical in saying, “Anyone can do what Lai Chih-Sheng does.” I think this actually captures his artistic stance well; ironically, it is precisely this lack of a strong claim to authorship that establishes his own personal style.

In the art industry, the rise of an artistic celebrity is actually supported by a whole system of mechanisms that remain largely invisible. As writer Marina Benjamin insightfully describes in her discussion of “housework”, the success of certain types of labor is predicated on their invisibility; they are, in and of themselves, self-erasing activities. In Lai Chih-Sheng’s 2012 work “Life-size Drawing” at the Hayward Gallery, he spent two weeks meticulously drawing all the edges in the largest exhibition space of the gallery using a pencil. Despite the artist’s intense labor, the final result was an empty space in the exhibition, as if the laborious artistic work had never existed. Perhaps it is indeed true that, if we do not make an effort to uncover them, many aspects of artistic labor may seem as if they never existed at all.

FIG. 3 The artist working in progress (Photo courtesy of the artist).

In his recent exhibition “Clearing,” Lai Chih-Sheng more explicitly reveals his intention to highlight this invisible labor and relegates his own authorship to a secondary role. This consideration is reflected in his artist’s statement, which begins with, “To work here, an empty space is the key,” and concludes with, “Lastly, I’d like to hang a small seascape.”

By placing the final result as a secondary consideration in his creative process, Lai Chih-Sheng underscores a crucial point: if the artist is indeed at the core of the art industry, one might suggest that the mechanism of art cannot be separated from art itself. Lai Chih-Sheng’s work thus reveals a counter perspective, which is that art cannot be separated from its mechanisms either.

FIG. 4 Redefined horizontal line drawn by the artist (Photo courtesy of the artist).

In continuation with his consistent approach of minimal spatial intervention, Lai Chih-Sheng, in the conceptualization of “Clearing,” noticed that the floor of TheCube Project Space was tilted by approximately 7 degrees. He therefore decided to use “topological methods” to re-define a horizontal line at the baseboard heights of the surrounding walls, highlighting the inherent characteristics of the space itself.

Despite such a meticulous and subtle intervention, this gesture carries significant weight, especially during TheCube Project Space’s 15th anniversary, and even feels somewhat moving. At this pivotal moment for the independent institution, Lai Chih-Sheng, by emphasizing the intrinsic characteristics of the space, has recalibrated the level of the institution’s exhibition history over these 15 years, signifying that the more than 70 exhibitions that took place at TheCube Project Space were actually all completed on this tilted floor.

In the art industry, the vertical alignment of frames is crucial. However, when the floor itself is tilted, it means that it can never truly achieve physical equilibrium, nor can it meet the common standards for hanging artworks in galleries. Whether in a literal sense or as a metaphor, the “infrastructure” of this institution has never had a benchmark to refer to; it relies instead on the invisible labor of a diligent group of workers in the art industry to adjust the leveling through countless exhibitions, creating a space where things can happen.

FIG. 5 Leveling tube used in “Clearing” (Photo courtesy of the artist).

When viewers abruptly stand in the center of the exhibition space, and the space now becomes a “clearing,” things that were once at the edge of their vision will begin to occupy the center of their field of view — just on the other side of a thin curtain, busy administrative conversations and the scattered, intense sounds of typing can be heard.

FIG. 6 The seascape (Photo courtesy of the artist).

It is only at this moment that we see the artist’s so-called “seascape” — two interlocking ziplock bags, one deep blue and one transparent — both still containers. In the exhibition “Clearing,” the absence is no longer an eerie void of art’s self-erasure, but a marginal space that carries something “greater than the sum of its parts.”

①Lai Chih-Sheng’s artist website: https://www.laichihsheng.com/index.php/biography

② Jean, B. (2005). The Conspiracy of Art. Semiotext(e).

③ Sonia Sikka, ‘Clearing (Lichtung)’. In MA Wrathall (Ed.), The Cambridge Heidegger Lexicon (Cambridge University Press, 2021), pp. 152–159.