The floating life is like a dream. We may often return to where the dream begins, wondering whether we are still in the dream or outside of it.

Sometimes he wonders if there is such a moment in life when he sees the scene in his dreams. It’s so familiar, what he used to long for is right in front of him, that he can’t help but walk deep into it and stay therein. And it’s not about waking. As he looks back where the dream begins, makes him realize that this is reality not dreams. But the mist comes, as the rain and the flowing time also come.

The orchids may sit high on the branch, but the cat still visits, anyway. Is it the butterfly attached to the flower pistil, or is it the pistil that dreams of the butterfly? Is it the lost grasshopper, or the leaking moonlight, or the curious kitten who is the real visitor at night?…

Jang Tarng-Kuh’s works always see the turn in reality in life. Whether it is a lively secret corner or a deserted bush garden lost in time, to Jang Tarng-Kuh they’re all territories of truth, touch of the moment, and restless lives. And there are the vivid postures of his beloved cat, echoing the laidback country life and all the various creatures in nature. Such is how Jang Tarng-Kuh has always interpreted the breath of the earth through his sensitive, delicate realism.

And that day, just as always, among the greens and reds in the garden, there wonders the pure primal color. Somehow the rain in Yilan, with its dense mist, turns the courtyard into a foggy forest with winding paths leading to the deep…

“In the heavy mist, all colors are simplified or toned to some grayish, lowly saturated colors,” says Jang Tarng-Kuh. “It’s like a dream.”
And is there a colorful world or a black-and-white one in this dream? To Jang Tarng-Kuh, this imaginary world is wrapped with layers upon layers of time and space; built upon and surrounded by the layers, the dreams may be cloudy, yet they are also light, elegant, and clear. “It’s like mother nature in the fog in the morning, real as ever.”

It is said that only the solitary man hears the sound of the ground and sees the true color of a scene. The color of no color, just like the vernacular modern poetry, is subtle and romantic. In his painting, Jang Tarng-Kuh takes away rich, dense colors and replaces them with subtle grayish ones as transitions; this arrangement allows a dense misty aura in Jang’s frames, as if a veil of mystery falls in front of us. This way, as we watch Jang’s paintings, the scenery looks rather obscure, like looking at a flower in the fog; yet everything seems to fall into places as they should, and the emotions within grow richer and more mellow.

“A landscape in shades of grey is like a black-and-white movie, filled with joy, absurdity and unsophisticated mischief; ?there are always stories awaiting,” says Jang Tarng-Kuh. And if God decides to one extra day’s time, how would you like to use it? Entertain yourself, struggling with the dilemma of existence, or just do nothing and waste it?

Or, you can please take a seat, find a moment before dawn, find a lake covered with heavy mist and find a white chair. Do nothing and think nothing; forget yourself.

The cloud and mist linger as always. Are dreams the beginning of anticipation, or are they memories that stick around? They seem so true yet so obscure.