the Ghastly Exposure
by Janet Wong
2014
One fascinating yet upsetting subject about mankind is character that lives inside everyone of us. It can be positive or truly negative. Character is how you train, abuse, shape and form it by time to time. Idea strikes in when I explored the factors of unacceptable and intolerable attitude from the recent society. It became a movement quietly but fatally when social networks are accessible on smartphones which is the moment when moral ethics start to fall drastically. People start to express everything or anything they want or they need without any further thoughts. With the huge courage and support gained from the virtual society from network, a single timeline from Social network platform ended up as an entertainment service which people start to post their status for a reason. It now becomes an attitude which people no longer participates their real life activities while they are trying to open up a chat room in a virtual world. Criticise, gossip, cruelty, mean and these are all gained whenever they are afraid of missing out from the society.
To make a connection between society and my concept, I used modelling clay to shape a human face-like character as well as for the rest of the tiny clumps. It gives an organic feeling and I found this is the most suitable way to present the ugly, hideous inner side of human. It is like capturing the moment when the character didn’t even realised its real personality is being exposed. As I was inspired by the Disney cartoon character named ‘Pinocchio’ which his nose is elongated when he lied, I gave the character a long mouth because of its selfish and cruel personality. I would claim those yellow clumps are parts of the character which represent the neutral, original, real but timid side of it. Grey clumps are to represent an action when people start to fade away whenever they face their own target.
Grey and black panels at the background are placed to give a gloomy and cold feeling that had influenced the entire society by themselves. I arranged the panels in a slightly ‘V’ position which result in one single flat surface but surprisingly with a certain depth where shadows fall on the panels. It is surreal which it’s all happened in your dream, like a virtual space. It seems like a painting but it is actually a photo as I tried to blur the line between photography and painting which at some point I truly believed it achieves surrealism.
