Come Stroke the Perfect Surface (2003) / Linda C.H. LAI
26.67” x 40”; C-print, Lambda printing on metallic paper, mounted on Dibond aluminum compound panel / 3 editions / From the “Trespassing World Cities” series
Edition 1 was sold at Para/Site Art Space's 2010 Annual Fundraising Auction. November 2010, Kee Club, Hong Kong. Edition 2 was presented at the Asia Hotel Art Fair, Feb 25-27, 2011, Mandarin Oriental Hotel at Jiang Art Gallery.
A car is a car; a tree is just a tree. But a woman in the photographic and moving image media often bears the burden of having to represent something... In a Lomographic exercise with the "A" shutter at early night fall, the sheer play with light and chance generated a world that is totally self-sufficient within the frame space marked out by a woman's body, bearing no reference to any text for cultural reading, resisting any attempt at all for depth hermeneutics. (Linda Lai, 2009)
“I stroke the perfect surface”
[a poem written for and about the photograph by Theresa Junko Mikuriya]
I stroke the perfect surface, hoping it will reveal
Some sweet nectar of wisdom
As to how I may proceed.
Yet my thumb to and fro
First in circular motion
Then back and forth it goes
The glossy sheen yields nothing,
Not a single drop undone.
Its blunt edge may provoke
A friendly tickle
Or the burning quiver of an itch.
Maybe you did shrug a little
One finger now two, grazing at your flawless shell
Yet you give me nothing,
No smile no hint at all.
I scratch and scrape and chisel
I pick at the ends of your scab
I crunch and chew and spit you out.
But no, you give me nothing,
Nothing you give at all.
Egg yolk tears
Streak sideways
I’d rather see you laugh
Maybe I’ll break into a run then
And catch you after all.
I follow your trail breathless
Up and down I go
My body hurdles
Doubt flusters
Yet taut you stand resilient
Like there's nothing Nothing
There at all.
Spread across the asphalt
Ssshh!...
I hear the flow of your blood
Each capillary distended
With the screech of the wheel
The honk of the car
The thousand feet a shuffle.
And that face
In the piercing wail of the night
Harden into nothing.
For there had been nothing there at all.
(2003 / Theresa Junko Mikuriya)