Xu Ting

Raised in Beijing, China

Lives & works in New York, NY

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Edges

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My interest in the “edge” came from the process of line drawings. Drawing, a medium that defines edges, makes me think that finding edges is very remarkable mental activity. For example, when I try to understand an issue from the reality, I start by outlining the roughest edges. When my understanding gets deeper, the rough edges become more sophisticated. Finding the edge helps me to make connections and comparisons, which then help me to perceive. If things are lined up physically, their commonalities and differences become obvious. The edge forms the common part and defines the objects similarities and differences. I think forming-an-edge is related to mental certainty because realizing an edge comes from an articulation which starts from an obscurity and leads to a clarity. I regard this process as a fact-revealing. So as a truth seeker, I must study this issue of the edge.

I have been making a series of images on this theme. First, I believe the linear edge has physical qualities, and they are revealed by the thickness, the consistency of the thickness, the curves, and the radian measure of the curves. These individual edges join and interact with each other to make an edge system. Branches, joints, and nets, exhibit these structural patterns. Sometimes objects are recognized by the structure of their edges. To observer this, I was drawn to forms with linear structures like trees’ branches, rivers’ joints, textiles, human bodies (with or without flesh) and folded lines of paper. By doing this, I’m trying to see the different structural possibilities happening to the edges.  

I have been using drawing, paper cutting and photography. The unique part of the cutting relates to the edges because the idea of cutting a form is either to connect the edges or not. I consider this aspect to be the interactions of the edges. Another medium, photography, records my thinking conveyed in the light. For example, in my photograph of the folded lines of the paper, the shadows of the folding lines were recorded. Whether the shadow is on the right side or the left side of the folded line reveals the fact that the folded lines were produced by the serial folds in a certain order. I think Photography is the most suitable medium to me, because my studies in edges come from my desire to reveal facts from the reality. Photography has the most direct relation to the reality but because photographs produce illusions, the inevitable “non-reality” opens ideas for my thinking. Due to dimensional displacement, edges are presented in the new altered ways. By realizing this fact, I can either use it or avoid it.

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The word "Edges" was taken from Duyao's MSN Space in 2005. 

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