“Impermanent Marks” series derives from a collection of news footage of the catastrophic events that Taiwan has experienced over the years since the artist Peng Yihsuan’s early memories dated back to 1996. Peng Yihsuan synchronizes retrospective memories of his personal genealogy with the footage of these public events produced by Taiwan's press media and uses whiteboards-a medium with impermanent nature-for marking, recording and communicating his description of these events.
The creation of the artist’s latest series presented at 2019 Art Basel Hog Kong begins from the year 2016. On a sliding whiteboard, Peng recalls and traces the memories of disasters happened in previous years, whether it is the natural calamity brought by the severe typhoon Meranti in 2016, or the grief of the photographer Chi Po-lin’s plane crash in 2017 and the heavy losses of the Hualien earthquake in 2018. The reappearance of these scenes was a hit to the public but also aroused the collective consciousness of the society. By means of the whiteboard, “Impermanent Marks” emphasizes the fugitiveness of the visual. Sliding the mobile whiteboards causes images to stack and layer onto the other. Therefore, the effect of these images is diluted by the continuous alternation of information. Scenes of public memories intertwine with those of the artist’s individual experience. The layering images reflect the easily forgotten reality of Taiwan’s media, while plants with unclear geographical location and the chaotic marks subtly reveal the instability of this Nanyang island country.
Complicated lines are left on the whiteboard after the extraction of the projected images. Outlining the contour replaces pictorial composition in Peng’s drawing. This action analogous to documenting transforms the jumbled and chaotic memories into a kind of programming which reflects the public’s experience. Outlined with fleeting whiteboard marks, these overlapping images are in an unstable state that could disappear at any time. However, these broken fragments have already been aggregated into personal history, and have become shared memories deeply rooted in every Taiwanese individual.
