Liang Chen: Aleph

“א (Aleph)” is the first letter in the Hebrew alphabet. In Jewish mystic philosophy, this letter signifies infinite, pure divinity. Mathematician Georg Cantor used aleph to stand in for limited infinite sets; writer Jorge Luis Borges used it to represent the infinity of the universe in his novels. With these links to the infinite, the ultimate, and the metaphysical, aleph contains a worldview that transcends temporal and spatial limits to become the core concept in architect Liang Chen’s consideration of the connection between architecture, time, and space.

Liang’s solo show is primarily comprised of an immersive spatial work. He fills the museum’s second-floor space with seven interconnected black cavities; the interior surfaces of the cavities are covered with seven types of clothing personally selected from Liang’s childhood to the present. Clothing is a second skin for the body; it symbolizes both personal memories and the atmosphere of a moment in time. Even as he reshapes viewers’ memories of the museum space, Liang Chen extends an individual life into a spatial landscape. The objects and lights placed inside the cavities are corresponding symbols of the evolution of the earth’s topography and human civilization; the expansive scale of history is refined and transformed into adjustments to viewers’ perceptions of the cavity space. As the exhibition title suggests, every cavity space is an aleph. Personal memories and temporal histories are concentrated here; they lead to the soul, but also look toward the infinite.