Immortal Snow Preface/Yu Cyuan GAO

Snow is one of the states of water, a natural phenomenon, yet for someone like me living in a subtropical region, it is almost non-existent in my daily life. Perhaps influenced by movies and poetry, I have a romantic and mysterious imagination of snow.

I don't remember when it started, but this almost non-existent snow in my life began to appear in my paintings. Maybe it was to depict the whiteness and coldness of winter, perhaps merely as an embellishment on the picture, or maybe it was a deep-seated yearning for snow.

Reflecting on the origin of this yearning, I recall a winter day in my childhood when my family planned to visit Hehuanshan to see the snow. The anticipation of seeing snow for the first time was as joyful as the excitement of a school field trip. However, this excitement was cut short as our car, without snow chains, had to turn back. Later, my family was lucky enough to win a trip to Japan by lottery. Before we set off, I had heard that it was already snowing in Tokyo, but when we arrived, the weather was unexpectedly bright and clear, and the brief warmth again kept me from seeing the snow.

It seems that snow has always slipped through my fingers, so my impression of snow has remained at the level of a physical phenomenon until one serendipitous encounter. This encounter with snow changed my perception of the fleeting nature of time.

Since buying a car, I have fallen in love with driving around and exploring, especially in remote places. Once, as winter was ending and spring was approaching, I set off on an unplanned trip towards Hualien. Checking the map, the route from Nantou to Hualien seemed not too far, so I decided to drive from the central mountain highway to Nantou and then to Kaohsiung. As I ventured deeper into the mountains, the sun set and the sky grew dark. The GPS signal became unstable, and as the altitude increased, I entered a thick fog. Without any preparation and dressed only in a short-sleeve shirt, the dropping temperature made me tense. Feeling the car's engine tremble, I decided to stop and check.

The moment I stepped out of the car, I felt a cool drop on my hand. Instinctively, I looked up to see frost-covered treetops at an altitude of over 2,000 meters. The drops were actually frozen rain that melted upon contact with my skin. Although it was a momentary change of state, it left a deep impression on my mind and became a significant part of my inner journey.

The world is constantly changing, and no matter how beautiful a scene is, it is like a snowflake in the palm of your hand; it melts away after a brief moment. It's like returning to the starting point and beginning again. The world tells us the meaning of existence in various ways, but the only thing that can be preserved is memory. Creating art is like extracting and recreating these memories, much like turning fresh flowers into eternal flowers, hoping to save the beauty we care about and want to keep.

Human memory and brain storage capacity are limited. As we age and experience more, to avoid information overload, forgetting is a normal occurrence. Memories in the brain gradually fade, just like flowers losing their brilliance over time. Even with a camera, it only mechanically records the "object," and the records and traces of existence only hold meaning for those who still remember.

In my works, I use numerous visual symbols to depict landscapes, drawing from the contours of mountains and seas and the colors of the seasons as experienced and imagined. I combine my personal experiences and perceptions to recreate these landscapes, with proportions and spatial relationships arranged according to my imagination rather than realism. These landscapes, composed of extracted and assembled memory fragments, cannot be specifically depicted and include sensations such as temperature, smell, humidity, and intertwined emotions. I choose colors or symbols that I believe represent these experiences, reconstructing the landscapes through distortion, filling, assembling, and imagination. These reconstructed landscapes carry my most authentic inner scenery, becoming my own " Plausible landscape paintings."


高堉銓創作自述~「永生雪」

雪，是水的的其中一種狀態，是一種自然界的現象，卻對於生活在亞熱帶的我來說是幾乎種不存在於生活中的場景，或許是受到電影和詩詞作品的影響，讓我對於雪的意象更添一份浪漫、神秘的想像。

不知從何時開始，這幾乎不存在我生活裡的雪，出現在了我的畫作中，或許是想表現出冬季裡的白與冷冽，或許只是畫面上的點綴效果，又或許是一份埋在我心底對雪的嚮往。

關於嚮往的起點，讓我想起某個兒時的冬日，要跟著家人準備到合歡山去賞雪，那份即將初見雪的悸動，對當時的我來說如同期待校外教學的興奮，但這份興奮因車子未綁上雪鏈無法上山而折返。在更之後，家人幸運地抽中到日本旅遊的獎項，出發前，聽說那時候的東京已是白雪紛飛，但真的到了日本後，天氣卻意外地明媚晴朗，短暫的回暖也讓我再次與雪錯過。

雪，似乎總與我擦身而過，所以一直以來對於雪的印象都僅停留在物理現象層面上的理解，直到某一次的偶然，我真正與雪相遇，也翻轉了我對於雪的瞬息而變的時間感。

自從買了車之後，我開始愛上開著車四處探險，尤其喜歡往遠離人煙的地方。曾經，在一個告別大寒，迎來立春之際，雖仍感微涼但也步入了春暖花開的時節，一趟以花蓮為行駛方向卻無訂下目的旅行，看了看地圖上那段南投與花蓮路途似乎不是太遠，當下決定從中橫開往南投再北迴到高雄，越往深山後，太陽西落天色漸暗，導航系統開始無法穩定接收訊號，隨著海拔變高開始進入雲霧之中，沒有預做任何準備甚至只穿著短袖就上山的我，體感溫度的降低也讓我繃緊神經，後來感受到車子引擎的顫動，就決定先停車查看。

當走出車外的那一剎那，滴落在我手背上涼意，讓我下意識往上方看去，海拔兩千多公尺的樹梢掛滿了冰霜，才發現滴下的雨滴點原來是凝固的冰，接觸到我手上的體溫馬上就融化了，雖然那是一瞬間的狀態改變，但對我而言卻深刻烙印在我的腦海中，進入到心裡的旅途。

世界一直在變化，無論再美好的景色，都如同落在掌心的雪花，短暫的停留後就會消縱而逝，就像回到起點再次開始，世界用各種方式告訴我們存在的意義，但唯一能保留下來的也僅僅只有記憶而已，而創作就如同在將這些記憶提取並重現，如同將鮮花製作成永生花的過程，希望能將在意的、想留下的美好，盡可能地保存。

人類的記憶能力與大腦儲存空間是有限的，隨著年齡增長、經歷的增加，為了避免訊息過載與保持大腦靈活性與處理效能，遺忘，是一種適應性的機制，腦中的記憶會日漸失真，如鮮花隨時間推移而失去原本的豔麗，即使用了相機，也僅只是透過機械的方式將物理空間上的「物」紀錄下來而已，而紀錄與存在的痕跡，也僅只對還有記憶的人有所意義。

在我的作品中，使用大量的視覺符號來描繪風景，參考了生活與認知中的山海輪廓與四季色彩，匯聚我個人經驗與抽象感知將其後製，比例與空間關係因循我的想像佈局，而並非單純以寫實的方式來創作。這些由記憶碎片萃取、組合而成無法具體描繪的心象風景，例如溫度、氣味、濕度、還有交織其中的心境感受，我選擇用我認為可以代表它的顏色或是符號來再現其存在，經歷了失真、填補、拼湊與想像而重新建構的風景，承載了我心中最真實的風景，成為無特定指向的「似是而非的風景畫」。