| Artweek How do you understand plastic, both
as a material and as a philosophical or cultural phenomenon? Shirley Tse The plastic that I use is synthetic polymer, and it comes in many different forms. The physical material comes in gels, films, foam, what have you. Even though some people think of plastic as something very specific, such as Tupperware, or a rubber ball, Styrofoam is also a kind of plastic. This one word, "plastic," conjures up so many images; some of them are even contradictory to each other, yet the word doesn’t stop to adhere to just one meaning, it carries all of these different connotations as well. As a cultural phenomenon, it can be a symbol of progress, a threat to the environment, something kitsch, or a highly sophisticated design, from a supermarket bag to an aerospace component. All of these examples once again originate without eliminating each other. I’m not sure if this has something to do with the limitations of language. AW In some ways, all of your work with plastic has infused complexity into conceptual categories that are usually reduced to a series of opposites: organic/synthetic, handmade/ manufactured and structure/surface, to name a few. How central are these tensions to your work? ST I don’t have a problem with the binary, per se. I only have a problem when the pairs within this binary are put into some kind of hierarchy, when one term is more desirable than another. For example, we have "natural" and "artificial" as a binary. And essentially, I don’t have a problem with this distinction. That’s really the very essence of language—the relational differences between things. But when you imply that the natural is more desirable than the artificial, then that poses a problem. The binary will always be there, whether we like it or not, but perhaps a way to move beyond a sort of latent value or hierarchy within that binary would be to reevaluate the relationships between the two terms. Perhaps an intensification of this binary is another way in which one can turn this simple relationship into something more complex. This can create endless fissures and subdivisions, a kind of radical difference, in the Deleuzian sense. AW In some ways, your piece in 010101, Polyworks (2000-2001) seems to be a return to your exploration of the sculptural presence of your materials. Yet your use of color seems different, less about transforming an entire surface and more about creating detail. What trajectory is your work following? ST I like to see the use of colors in this piece as creating a kind of indeterminacy. You can’t quite figure it out. Is it decorative, per se, or does it function as a color-coding? I think the way we like to think about composition in a traditional sense is now resurfacing in a lot of things that are mediated by technology. Almost by default, you start seeing a strange aesthetic side to things - but it’s not functional in the usual sense. You said the piece seemed to be reworking issues of sculpture, and someone else actually said that it’s like a reworking of the issues of painting. I agree to a certain extent. It’s the most painterly piece I’ve ever done. It’s like a pseudo-return to painting b default, an examination of these notions of coding and over-constructedness. AW The show attempts to look at how artists are reflecting our current historical moment, where new technologies are transforming our daily lives as well as our ways of thinking and perceiving. How do you think your work relates to these issues? ST Issues of technology are very much in my work, from a kind of industrial, machine aesthetic to this sort of digital coding. I think one thing that is interesting about new technology, as opposed to the old, is that we used to think of technology in the past as something that grew out of necessity - we had a steam engine because we needed to move faster. But with a lot of new technology, there really isn’t a need for it, many of these things are for the pure pleasure of consumption. This really opens up a sea of possibility for things that are not driven by necessity, so that technology becomes its own entity rather than a tool or an instrument. Also it’s interesting to look at 010101 and to consider all of this tactile work - Adam Ross’s, Chris Finley’s as well as my own - to be traditional. My sculpture is actually something very new, something that people are having a hard tome calling sculpture. But within the context of 010101, because we differentiate between the digital realm and cyberspace versus physical, empirical space, it might seem traditional. 
detail of Polyworks, 2000 polystyrene, plastic & vinyl, 90" x 77" |
