Developed during the Artists in Labs residency at the Asia Culture Centre (ACC) in Gwangju, South Korea, Still Life reimagines the traditional floral still-life genre through the lens of science and mathematics. Digital diagrammatic fragments—derived from scientific and mathematical sources—are printed on custom-made roller blinds using archival inks, evoking obscure prehistoric symbols or cryptic hieroglyphs.

 

The installation forms a navigable 5×5×2.4 m maze of double-sided, translucent blinds suspended on aluminium rigging with lighting and cables. The blinds can be raised or lowered to create nearly half a million possible routes, ensuring each passage offers a unique visual experience and rendering a complete view of all surfaces impossible. At the maze's center hangs a contemporary interpretation of Novalis's Blue Flower (developed during a prior Kyoto residency at the Kyoto University Centre for Advanced Studies), symbolizing poetic wonder amid rational systems.

 

Visitors can learn more about the origins and meanings of the digital diagrammatic fragments using image recognition software on their smart devices. The work explores diagrammatology's interest in visual knowledge structures and Romantic-Objectivism's fusion of empirical precision with speculative imagination, transforming the classic still-life into an interactive labyrinth of discovery and partial perception.