zelin seah - 2021 - 2 Dimensional Man

Two-Dimensional Man

2022 l Container Series l Solo Project
Chance Constellation, S.E.A FOCUS 2022, Richard Koh Fine Art, Singaporehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7F6SYvuM5E

There is a flat and sealed world I am experiencing: the skimmed walls, the flat screens, and the expressionless faces. Underneath the seamlessness, there are many we hide, such as pipes and wires, and emotions. My works from recent years all address similar issues on the spiritual void that derives from digitalization. This series of works composted traces of daily images that are arranged in a flat floating composition like a working space in 3D modeling software, evoked the faded quality of ancient religious arts with knife carving, revealing my experience of hovering between daily space, virtual space, and spiritual space. As I am familiar with being confined in the limited space of modernity, I find the lockdown is one of the extreme versions that accelerated its development. Not only did it try to limit my body, but also my mind was overloaded and predicted by the Internet. The title “Two-Dimensional Man” echoes Herbert Marcuse’s description of “One-Dimensional Man”. In the “one-dimensional” world of thought and behavior, the ability of critical thinking and opposing behavior gradually disappears. In addition, the “Two-Dimensional Man” is a metaphor I borrowed from the “Lying Flat” movement initiated by the younger generation in China, suggesting a new attitude towards life: lying flat, turning to slow life, in order to leave room for thoughts, to correspond to the scientific progressive social pressure. As a response, the series of works hint at my will of staying flat in the over-progressive modernity.