Light • Zen • Motion—Echo Lew

2022.01.01 - 2022.02.28 KMFA Gallery B01


Is this actually painting or photography? It is both painting and photography. 
With camera and lighting, Lew has created a series of “light drawings” by integrating his decades of experiences in painting and long exposure photography. After six years of exploration and experiments, he has achieved conceptual and technical breakthroughs in his artistic creation, which enables free imagination, independent thinking, and unlimited possibilities of art. Lew once said, “To me, art is an adventure full of experiments, a game of deep immersion.” This exhibition, Light • Zen • Motion—Echo Lew, is Lew’s first exhibition back in Kaohsiung since he moved to the US in 1983, sharing with viewers in his hometown his artistic achievements from many years of hard work abroad.

Supported by: 
Ministry of Culture, Bureau of Cultural Affairs, Kaohsiung City Government
Organized by: Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts
Appointed Deformaldehyde Coating Sponsor: HOPAX

-

Artist Statement
"The Light Drawings in Space"

Echo Lew 

After several hours of preparation, I use just a single shot to complete each image. During an exposure time of approximately one minute, I manipulate lights in front of the camera to create “Light Drawings.” Sometimes I invert the positive image to a negative one on a computer but otherwise the “Light Drawings” are not manipulated. Sometimes I put the same positive and negative images side-by-side in the finished piece. 

I have been drawing with traditional mediums for twenty-eight years. I used oil painting to explore the effects of light in a 2006 solo exhibition, “See the Light,” at the Little Tokyo Cultural Center, partnered with Helen Keller International. I became curious about the effects of lights in motion. Could this become the basis of a new kind of drawing? I experimented with cameras and lights until I was able to spontaneously tap into decades of drawing experience while the camera’s shutter was open, bringing life to a series of “Light Drawings.”  

The technique originated in 1914 when scientists Frank and Lillian Gilbreth used small lights and an open shutter to track the motions of factory workers.  My light drawings are inspired by Jackson Pollock and Cy Twombly whose paintings are composed with spontaneous actions, performances traced in time.

In my Zen Buddhist meditation practice, the lights bend like a reed in the breeze,  or soar freely as a bird above a cliff, thousands of lights dancing in my mind. The inner world is clean, clear and full of fresh air. Thousands of lights move as a wave. The secrets of the universe are revealed.

Music, especially classical symphony, also shapes these visions. I draw the feelings the music brings forth, the expansive sense of flying over mountains, rivers, and oceans.

I have been an abstract painter for many years, concerned with line, shape, composition and concept. Digital photography allows me to expand creatively while using an ultra-contemporary medium with limitless potential.

Art for me is an experimental adventure, a profound form of play.