The world is all around, so is your perception

El Lissitzky said, "Space is not there for the eye only: it is not a picture; one wants to live in it... We reject space as a painted coffin for our living bodies." I like this quote a lot in thinking about the action of viewing an art piece. Since the space is multi-sensible, it is certainly not just for the eyes, it is for the body, with the mind for reading it, interpreting it, and for forgetting it. The space is the location of a kind of "being", in one moment. The space is existing within the present, the past, and the future. Therefore a site is filled with possibilities of inventions and reconstruction. The meaning of a space is forever-changing, just like our perception of it.

Installation work, as an art practice that aimed to create an immersive environment, an absorptive moment for the viewers, certainly establishes a particular "space" for the spectators. Viewers' reading on the work is always significant in adding another layer of meanings to the work of its own. Therefore, installation art is always incomplete to its full meaning, and is alway partial to its whole contexts. Viewers' physical and mental engagements can always contribute to the core of the work within their conscious knowledge and unconscious association. The reading process of a work can certainly be influenced by the way it presented, by the circumstance of the display, but the action of "entering into" from the inner spirit of the work toward the feeling of a viewer is always unclear, sacred, and uncanny. How subjectivity is unfolded through the observation of objectivity is the question for a metaphysical concern.

Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology is absolutely helpful when we thinking about how visuals become knowledge, as the way art objects become meanings. So Merleau-Ponty's claim that the perception is never just about the visuals is so true that we need to consider the reading of an installation work on the behalf of the whole body, with multiply sensibilities. The interaction between the selfness and the rest of the world is a question about the human perception, with the physicality of one's presence and conceptual layers that constitute the presence. Just as Bishop's words, " the world is all around me, not in front of me." So when discussing the use of Theatricality in installation art in responding to Minimalism, artists create a specific space for viewers to enter into and then invite them to play the role of "actors". And the artist is the director of this constructed dramatic play. In thinking about the formal aspect of the sculptural elements in this kind of installation work, every piece of object is functioning as a part of the "plot". Objects with their use values/ practical capabilities and their sign values/ cultural meanings enter into the readers' minds, and then provoke the spectator to recall their relationships to those objects or events. All of these elements, material objects and conceptual feelings or memories come together inside the viewers' mental world to contribute to their experience with the piece.