Pleased to share Su-Mei Tse’s participation in The New Vision: Monet and the Contemporary Gaze, presented by Pola Museum of Art. Marking the museum’s 25th anniversary and the centenary of Claude Monet (1840-1926), the exhibition brings together nineteen works by the Impressionist master from the museum’s distinguished collection, the largest Monet collection in Asia, alongside works of eighteen contemporary artists. Through their diverse ways of seeing, the exhibition invites a renewed contemplation of vision itself, opening new horizons onto Monet’s enduring artistic vision.

Magnificent landscapes reflected in a sphere appear upside down, while the crystal ball seems to glide by magic through the jugglerʼs fluid hands. A Certain Frame Work is a series in which Su-Mei Tse engages with subjects shaped by historical frameworks, revisiting the histories of places and the narratives embedded within them.

For this exhibition, Tse has produced a new work. Its settings—the garden at Giverny and the city of Venice—are both places that Monet loved, observed, and painted. The inverted image evokes both the human retina and the camera obscura, the optical precursor of the photographic camera. As the glass orb continues to turn in the performerʼs hands, our own vision seems continually to be re-configured, together with the gaze Monet once directed toward these places.

— Courtesy of Pola Museum of Art.