Assenza — Absence

不在场

主体的流放与生命的拟像
The Exile of the Subject and the Simulacrum of Life

A monotype print from the ASSENZA series by Hydon BAI. An isolated shopping cart rendered in muted tones against a textured, grainy background reminiscent of industrial electronic noise. The image bears the characteristic surface quality of the Hydon BAI Method — a deterministic monotype process where the original drawing is destroyed at the moment of printing, leaving each print as an unrepeatable physical artifact.

About

Monotype 独幅版画 Subject Exile 主体流放 Simulacrum 拟像 Digital Nihilism 数字虚无 Hydon BAI Method

展览前言

现代年轻人最隐秘的精神症状，或许是“自己缺席了自己的生活”。

在一个被无限滑动与算法景观吞噬的时代，我们花费海量的时间寄生在屏幕里他人的喜怒哀乐中。我们在代理的情绪中消耗清晨与黄昏，甚至连自身的欲望，也沦为对他人生活拟像的拙劣模仿。手机放下的一瞬间，现实变成了一片失重的旷野。我们在他人的生活里高朋满座，却在自己的生命现场彻底缺席（Absence）。

艺术家 Hydon BAI 的独幅版画系列《不在场》（Assenza），正是对这场当代精神异化的一场视觉微观解刻。

画面中那些被孤立的购物车、空置的折叠椅、在工业电子燥点般的肌理中静默的日常媒介，不再是单纯的历史遗迹，而是现代人精神退场后的心理废墟。与这种“生命的缺席”形成互文的，是艺术家近乎苦行僧式的“肉身在场”—他所独创的 Hydon BAI Method（确定性独幅版画），要求将巨大的手工业劳动与情感密度注入亚克力板，而在经历版画机的高压压印后，原画在生成图像的瞬间便走向仪式性的毁灭。

这是一场用“物质的极端确定性”对抗“数字虚无”的抵抗。BAI 创造了一个无人的剧场，每一件孤品都是一张精神的物证。他用这些将人抽离的图像向屏幕前的我们发出提问：当图像在无休止地复制，当我们在热烈地观察世界时，我们究竟把属于自己的人生，交代给了哪里？

Perhaps the most insidious spiritual symptom of the contemporary generation is the “total absence from one’s own life.”

In an era consumed by infinite scrolling and algorithmic spectacles, we spend an immense amount of time parasitizing the joys and sorrows of others displayed on our screens. We expend our dawns and dusks on delegated emotions; even our desires have degenerated into clumsy imitations of the simulacra of other people’s lives. The moment the smartphone is put down, reality collapses into a weightless wilderness. We are surrounded by crowded banquets in other people’s narratives, yet entirely absent from the actual site of our own existence.

Artist Hydon BAI’s monotype series, Assenza (Absence), serves as a precise visual dissection of this contemporary spiritual alienation.

The isolated shopping carts, the vacant folding chairs, and the mundane media silenced within textures reminiscent of industrial electronic noise are no longer mere historical remnants. Instead, they are the psychological ruins left behind by the withdrawal of the modern spirit. Paradoxically mirroring this “absence of life” is the artist’s almost ascetic “somatic presence.” His proprietary technique, the Hydon BAI Method (Deterministic Monotype), demands that a massive volume of manual labor and emotional density be infused into an acrylic plate. Yet, upon undergoing the high-pressure matrix of the printing press, the original drawing faces ritual destruction at the exact moment the image is born.

This is a resistance that deploys the “absolute determinism of materiality” against “digital nihilism.” BAI constructs an empty theater where each unique, unrepeatable print stands as a piece of spiritual evidence. Through these images purged of human figures, he confronts us behind the screen with a vital question: As images replicate endlessly and we fervently observe the world, where exactly have we abandoned the one life that truly belongs to us?

我们的情绪在屏幕里热闹地对峙，而现实的房间里，只剩下两具无声退场的空壳。窗外是全世界源源不断的景观，窗内是我不知该如何交代的一生。

Our emotions clash vibrantly behind the screen, while in the actual room, nothing remains but two silently evacuated shells. Outside the window lies an endless stream of the world’s spectacles; inside, the heavy weight of a life I have no idea how to live.

Absence .01 2018, Monotype on paper

A monotype print from the ASSENZA series by Hydon BAI. A vacant folding chair stands alone, rendered in delicate tonal variations against a surface marked by the unique grain and pressure texture characteristic of the deterministic monotype process. The empty seat reads as both object and void — a place where someone once was, and is no longer.

Absence .02 2018, Monotype on paper

A monotype print from the ASSENZA series by Hydon BAI. A pair of empty shells or hollow forms sit side by side, rendered in muted, atmospheric tones against the distinctive grain field of the deterministic monotype process. The two forms read as former containers — structures that once held something living and now stand evacuated, their emptiness becoming the subject itself.

Absence .03 2018, Monotype on paper

习惯了在屏幕里目睹远方的迁徙，轮到自己出发时，才发现早已丧失了指引现实的方向。大脑塞满了世界的噪音，而支撑肉身前进的内核，早已在无人察觉的虚无中被碾至变形。我们模仿着别人的欲望，搭建起生活的骨架，却唯独弄丢了可以安放自我的坐席。

Having grown accustomed to witnessing distant migrations on a screen, I discover when it is finally time to depart that I have long lost the steering wheel of my own reality. The mind is glutted with the noise of the world, while the vital core that propels the body forward has already been crushed out of shape within an unnoticed emptiness. Immersed in imitating the desires of others, we erect the sheer scaffolding of a life, only to misplace the very seat where the self belongs.

A monotype print from the ASSENZA series by Hydon BAI. A bicycle rendered in a state of structural collapse, its frame buckling under an invisible weight against the characteristic grained surface of the deterministic monotype process. The bicycle — an object defined entirely by forward momentum and autonomous control — appears arrested mid-collapse, its stillness charged with the weight of a body that can no longer propel itself forward. The Hydon BAI Method, where the original drawing on acrylic is destroyed under high pressure at the moment of printing, makes the surface texture inseparable from the image's meaning.

Absence .04 2018, Monotype on paper

A monotype print from the ASSENZA series by Hydon BAI. A bicycle twisted into deformation, its geometry warped beyond functional recognition, set against a field of atmospheric grain and pressure texture unique to the deterministic monotype process. The subdued palette and physical surface depth produced by the Hydon BAI Method — immense manual labor invested into an acrylic plate, then ritually destroyed in the printing — transform the bicycle from a mundane object into something forensic: a material witness to deformation that is as much psychological as it is physical.

Absence .05 2018, Monotype on paper

A monotype print from the ASSENZA series by Hydon BAI. The scattered remains of a bicycle — fragmented components bereft of the coherence that once made them a vehicle of autonomous movement — rendered in subdued tonal gradations against the densely grained surface characteristic of the deterministic monotype technique. The Hydon BAI Method's unique material signature, the residue of high-pressure transfer and ritual destruction of the original plate, charges the image with the gravity of an archaeological record: what remains when the capacity to steer one's own trajectory has disintegrated into separate, inert parts.

Absence .06 2018, Monotype on paper

过度预装的欲望 Preloaded Desire

每个人都有一辆空的推车，在时代的洪流里盲目地走，里面装满了被灌输的欲望，唯独没有自己。

Each of us pushes an empty cart, drifting blindly through the currents of our era, piling it high with spoon-fed desires, yet utterly devoid of the self.

A monotype print from the ASSENZA series by Hydon BAI. A shopping cart stands alone, its empty basket rendered in muted, subdued tones against the grained surface characteristic of the deterministic monotype process. The cart — an object designed to carry — appears as both vessel and void, its hollowness made visible through the material depth of the Hydon BAI Method, where the original drawing on acrylic is destroyed under high pressure at the moment of printing. The image reads as a portrait of accumulation without substance: a container filled with everything except the self.

Absence .07 2018, Monotype on paper

无能为力 Surrendered

所有的媒介和保护都还在现场，但需要被庇护的肉身，早已在屏幕的虚拟高潮里，彻底缴械。

All the shields and shelters remain on site, yet the physical body meant to be protected has long since surrendered within the virtual ecstasy of the screen.

A monotype print from the ASSENZA series by Hydon BAI. Protective equipment or shielding forms stand in a mute arrangement against the characteristic grained surface of the deterministic monotype process. Every apparatus of shelter remains in place, yet the body they were built to safeguard is conspicuously absent — surrendered, withdrawn, no longer requiring protection. Rendered through the Hydon BAI Method, where the original plate is destroyed under high pressure at the moment of printing, the image carries the weight of a forensic record: all defenses intact, but the thing they defended has already capitulated.

Absence .08 2018, Monotype on paper

无形心理边界 Invisible Boundary

它高频地出现在每一个日常的街角，隔开现实的边界。我们习惯了对此视而不见，直到我们也用它圈禁了自己的灵魂。

It signals its relentless presence at every ordinary street corner, cordoning off the boundaries of reality. We are used to looking past it, until we use it to cage our own souls.

A monotype print from the ASSENZA series by Hydon BAI. An everyday barrier or boundary marker — the kind that appears at every street corner, silently dividing space — stands against the grained, pressure-marked surface characteristic of the deterministic monotype process. Rendered in muted tones through the Hydon BAI Method, where the original plate is destroyed at the moment of printing, the object reads simultaneously as a physical divider and a psychological threshold: a line drawn so often in the external world that we no longer see it, even as we replicate it within the architecture of our own consciousness.

Absence .09 2018, Monotype on paper

麦克风已就位，舞台灯光已打亮，但可以去表达、去掌控、去对当下的生活发表看法的那个"自我"，却在算法的景观里，迟迟不肯上台。

The microphones are set, the spotlight is on, yet the ‘self’—the one who should express, control, and comment on life—remains stubbornly backstage within the landscape of the algorithm.

A monotype print from the ASSENZA series by Hydon BAI. A microphone and stage apparatus stand ready — the spotlight on, every instrument of expression in place — rendered in subdued, grainy tones against the pressure-marked surface of the deterministic monotype process. Yet the stage is empty. The one who should speak, who should take hold of the present moment and give it a voice, remains absent. Rendered through the Hydon BAI Method, where the original plate is destroyed at the moment of printing, the image becomes a portrait of deferred presence: all conditions for speech are met, but the speaker never arrives.

Absence .10 2018, Monotype on paper

哪怕是一只壁虎，也在竭力建立两个影子。而屏幕前的我们，却任由那个本该构建自己人生的"真实影子"，在虚拟的旷野里，彻底不在场。

Even a gecko strives to cast two shadows. Meanwhile, behind the screen, we allow the ‘real shadow’—the one meant to build our own lives—to remain utterly absent within the virtual wilderness.

A monotype print from the ASSENZA series by Hydon BAI. A gecko clings to a surface, its body casting two shadows in the muted, grainy light characteristic of the deterministic monotype process. The creature's double silhouette becomes a quiet argument for presence — even a gecko insists on leaving a second trace of itself — rendered through the Hydon BAI Method, where the immense manual labor infused into the acrylic plate is ritually destroyed at the moment of printing. The image poses an unspoken question: if a gecko can cast two shadows, why have we allowed our own true shadow to dissolve into the virtual wilderness?

Absence .11 2018, Monotype on paper

隐形的致命一击 Invisible Lethal Strike

每天有成千上万颗高密度的信息子弹，横穿我们的精神。它们在虚拟中呼啸而过，却把我们在真实的现实里，钉死成一具无法动弹的静止躯壳。

Every day, thousands of high-density information bullets pierce our consciousness. They roar through the virtual void, only to pin us down into an immobile, static shell within actual reality.

A monotype print from the ASSENZA series by Hydon BAI. A cluster of bullet-like forms — projectiles of information — pierce the grained, pressure-marked surface characteristic of the deterministic monotype process. Rendered in muted, almost forensic tones through the Hydon BAI Method, where the original plate is destroyed at the moment of printing, the objects read as both physical ammunition and psychological metaphor: thousands of high-density data points tearing through consciousness daily, leaving the body pinned in place while the virtual world roars past.

Absence .12 2018, Monotype on paper