In this exhibition, Liang Shuo builds a topological space in the gallery. The audience enters the gallery and thus gets into a topological space. The theme “Tuo Pu Ou Le Ju” is a trick，a figure of speech that stresses the rhetoric itself. The fond taste for the excessive and the affected, boasts an undisguised affection for kitsch. An irony somehow arises from this overtness. This is perhaps what Liang means by the aesthetics of “Zha”. Certainly, Liang’s work does not remain on the level of aesthetic or cultural taste. What fascinates him more is the working mechanism: to create possibilities under certain conditions.
The newly renovated exhibition space provides a solid starting point for Liang Shuo. The spatial structure and the form of exhibiting (which essentially dissolves the traditional concept of exhibiting) all derive from the characteristics of the gallery space. Liang aims to create the continuity of space and the reflexivity of viewing That is to say, the form of exhibiting becomes the exhibit, while the experience of the viewers becomes the view. Continuity is a typical topological issue. Going beyond the continuity of surface and space, Liang moves towards the continuity of artistic system. By representing the full spectrum of the artistic production, Liang embraces the continuity of artistic system. Confined by limited time and budget, Liang chooses light construction materials and soft decoration papers to erect his topological space. More specifically, Liang pieces these irregular panels together to a three dimensional structure. He spreads the rectangular panels on the ground and throws sticks randomly from above. The irregular forms of these panels, therefore, are determined by the lines created when the sticks land on the panels.
With this working mechanism, Liang obtains the real freedom, as freedom is not the romanticised hollow concept of “freedom without constraints”. Actually, in Liang’s work, between taste and mechanism, in other words, between self and freedom, repulsion grows. Yet it is exactly this repulsion that fuels the two.