Have you ever paid attention – really paid attention – to the shape, colors, and light of the places you see every day, like your office or home? Taiwan artist Wang Te-yu has created an installation that attempts to make viewers question their assumptions about the space around them.

In this exhibition, the artist conjures up a site-specific dialogue between her works and the Yang Art Museum. It looks kind of simple – just large airbags. What Wang Te-yu tried to do, was to give people a deceptively simple, minimalist impression. She believes the installation will then lead viewers to break through the barrier of existing artistic concepts through their own physical experiences.

Once here, you need to activate your sense of art. Nobody would tell you what's going on with the exhibition. Visitors here are encouraged to enter the artist's world through touch. And the tactile experience is believed to be more important than the visual one.

"My work experience has proved that when two people see the same piece of painting, they would probably give similar visual descriptions," said Wang Te-yu. "But if sensed through touch, the feelings could be quite different. I make tactile experience an important part of my works because it's individual and unique. So even two visitors who come here at the same time, might feel totally different."

As she said, visitors do have their own understanding of the space they are in. "I feel that the membrane turns a stiff space into a soft one," said Zhao Runpu, while another male visitor, He Yue, said, "Through touch, I feel like I'm in a stomach, a stomach of a monster who is digesting me. The metal outside the membrane is like his bones. I feel he's alive, and I'm breathing with him in the same world."

For years, the artist has tried to explore the feeling of spatial presence with an extreme economy of media and goes on to meditate on the existential form and situation of people in these spaces. Wang has showcased a series of spatial creations named with serial numbers in different places of the world. She continually does research into the spatial theme, transforming the subjective and objective relationship between spaces and people. The works unexpectedly bring the viewer's subjective experience into a commonly-sensed space, through the mechanism of interaction. 

Wang said, "People wouldn't notice the shape of the space, the light in it and the pillars, even if they have come here many times. But when we cover it with the membrane, which is changing all the time as people walk in it, you'll find that the space is not what you thought it was." 

The installation, called "Reconstruct Dialogue," will open on November 17 at Yang Art Museum in Beijing, and run through January 20 next year.

(Top Photo: Some visitors look at the art installation "Reconstruct Dialogue" by artist Wang Te-yu. /Photo courtesy of Yang Art Museum)