About

Fingerprints comprises suspended plywood and perspex that explore intentionality and human agency. Inspired by the Arte Povera movement, this artwork takes the throw-away test papers and transport the scribbles to a contemporary art context.

Each person controls the direction of and forces applied to the action, much like an Abstract Expressionist painter showcasing gestural marks of spontaneity, or a Surrealist artist creating an automated painting without conscious thought. The formal qualities of the scribbles are the mental representation of intentionality or unintentionality. At any point of the ‘testing’, the action can start gaining or losing momentum, subjectivity, and intentionality, depending on what people see and how they feel.

Paintings can be indexical signs that possess physical power that point to the absence and presence of the painter. While challenging its own originality and authenticity, this work documents, actualises and reimagines a moment in time.

Bio

Through screen and installation, Rachel Feng’s works often investigate the dynamic between social beings and social institutions. Much influenced by the symbolic interactionist and structural-functionalist paradigms in Sociology, Feng finds herself drawn to themes such as institutional critic, identity, memory, and semiotics.

The artist makes conceptual works that usually pose a dilemma or a tension that encourages a search for reflective equilibrium.

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