CHIU YI-CHEN

2025

Chiu Yi-Chen's "Afternoon in San Francisco" reconstructs our preconceived notions of baseball fields and urban landscapes with a surrealistic approach. The surface of the painting features a familiar game scene, yet the field transforms into an island floating in fog, where the order of the ballpark is disrupted by fantastical elements, as if the viewer has entered a visual dream. This reimagining of reality evokes thoughts of French philosopher Gaston Bachelard's discussion in "The Poetics of Space" regarding dreams and places—space is not merely a physical presence but carries memories, fantasies, and psychological projections.

The details in the painting are exceptionally rich, with eyeball-shaped fruits hanging from cherry blossom trees, animal sculptures and strange creatures wandering across the field, and even jellyfish drifting in the background sky, merging terrestrial and oceanic imagery to create a multifaceted visual context. This recalls the magical realism of Gabriel García Márquez's "One Hundred Years of Solitude," where reality and fantasy seamlessly intertwine, rendering the everyday strange and novel.

In terms of composition, Chiu Yi-Chen maintains a classical perspective framework while simultaneously utilizing contrasts in color and texture to present a non-linear narrative quality. The orange track and blue water create a strong contrast that guides the viewer's gaze to the center of the field, enhancing the drama and visual tension of the piece. This treatment makes the artwork not just a depiction of a location, but a poetic reconstruction of urban culture and memory.

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