Pencil Sharpener, 2004
Ai-Chen Lin
with 100 people's participation
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Exhibition at The Diego Rivera Gallery, San Francisco, CA
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As a child in Taiwan, I sharpened pencils with an X-acto blade and it was like second nature.
In Pencil Sharpener, I critically relate the simplicity of daily life and of my personal experience to my viewers. In the project making process,
I asked one hundred people to each sharpen a pencil with an X-acto knife, and video taped them and their hand gestures at the same time.
In the installation space, the video (the hand gestures of one hundred people) projects on the TV screen. I displayed all one hundred pencils and their shavings on white shelves in the gallery.
The hand gesture with the sharp knife in the large-scale TV screen situates the viewer in high tension, which contrasts with the subtlety of the real objects: pencils and shavings.
The various gestures and the way of figuring out the sharpening imparts the complex story of each individual who took part in this project.
(c) 2006 Ai-Chen Lin
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