"Filling in New Soil" -- Tsai Chen-tse (蔡鎮澤) Solo Exhibition

The exhibition originates from observations of creations by elderly individuals with dementia and depression. The coloring books, originally tools of discipline, gradually deviate from prescribed paths in the hands of the elderly. Color blocks overflow boundaries, colors detach from reference, and the original normative structure is rewritten. These seemingly inaccurate choices should not be seen as a lack of function, but as a mode of perception that transcends established cognitive systems, making creation a field where life experiences re-emerge.

The works draw from the colors and brushstrokes in the elderly's creations, deconstructing, translating, splicing, and stitching them together. Fabrics, pigments, and fibers permeate, cover, and interlace on the surface, forming a continuously evolving plane. Stitching is no longer just an act of repairing gaps, but a process of re-establishing connections. Here, creation is seen as a labor of companionship. The works do not represent illness or describe care, but through the transformation of materials and the accumulation of handwork, they show how life faces absence, rupture, and change. Memories that cannot be fully preserved transform into colors; emotions difficult to express settle between fibers. The picture thus becomes a field of continuous growth, where individual experience, traces of time, and material memory intertwine.

"Filling in New Soil" does not refer to filling the past, but to opening new conditions for growth in life. New colors become new soil,承接 gradually loosening memories and identities; the renewed soil nurtures the possibility of sprouting again. As the old order slowly peels away, life continues to extend outward at its own pace, taking root in cracks and blooming amidst uncertainty.