We will leave and never return…

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We will leave and never return…
by Arin Rungjang

8/10 — 25/12/2022

By Arin Rungjang

8 October – 25 December 2022

Opening Reception: 8 October 2022

Venue: Gallery VER

“The blind man is not missing sightedness just as the stone is not missing sightedness….

and the wind is crying, standing on the shore of pride full of mud covering his feet,

dust is whispering; We will leave and never return…”

As we are limited by the ability to perceive reality, we imprison our surroundings within the meaning defined within human boundary. Nonetheless, reality is only fickle, changing eternally as being and time. Human only uses different means to comprehend, from religion, beliefs, science, to advanced innovation. The more we discover and invent new devices to explain reality, the more we grasp that reality as we know extends far beyond our clutch, beyond our capability of expression.

Bats compensate for their lack of sight with other senses in the dark. While eagle eyes, despite its sharpness in visual, are rendered helpless at night. Stones do not miss sightedness, it only perceives reality within its realm, out of the cage defined by the realm of human. As stone cannot describe protein, protein cannot describe political context, political context cannot describe stone, and vice versa. Existing altogether, it is essential to search for a map that shows the meaning and the expression of each domain that are presented in their companionship.

We attempt to create the means to end the suffering of our ignorance. Man-made tools such as language, symbols, or media are only specks of traces to create an atlas of existence and non-existence. Mural explaining the absolute truth offers simulacrums of reality based on humanist logic. The Sun as the blazing knowledge, the Lotus as the wise and the delight, the frigate as the doctrine. Even humans perceive experience differently. Candles, incense, fragrance, film screen, television screen, and 3D-generated images all hold different meanings depending on the eyes of the beholders.

And yet the Sun will perish, lotus withers, humans age, and stones erode. Similarly, nirvana may not be absolute. The wind shall carry our dust filled with these whisperings away. We will all leave this plain of materials. We will all leave and never return.

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