As Mantis’ show, Field of Vision wraps up, Mantis and Li meet to discuss the loss in the processes of design in relationship to personal identity and symbols. The following transcription is a continuation of a conversation from the previous day.

Field of Vision consists of works and experiments that perform a dissection on visual language. How much disassembly can take place before a sign loses its representational qualities? This show references Fredric Jameson’s theory that pastiche, or the cultural impulse to imitate, works as a wrapper. The signifier “becomes affirmed as autonomous and as a kind of unity in its own right,” eclipsing the signified.¹ Works in Field of Vision equips the wrapper as material to further nullify any connection the visual has to its meaning. A word becomes a shape. A symbol becomes flat. A representation of something is not greater than itself. The distance between the object and understanding is compressed so tightly together, that all that is left is the surface.

Works made in residency at Stride Gallery are in conversation with the architecture of the space. White paint, wood, and window space are referenced and used as material that both expand and collapse the extent of the gallery. 

Field of Vision ran from July 11 to September 19 2025.

_{1. Fredric Jameson. Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (Durham: Duke University Press, 1992), 103.}