In everyday life, we often mishear, misread, or misconstrue words in conversation and reading — yet such moments frequently give rise to unexpected humour and resonance. This phenomenon is particularly vibrant in Taiwanese pun culture: what may appear as nonsensical linguistic play is, in fact, rich with texture, context, and creativity. These ubiquitous wordplays serve as quiet reminders that language is not a sealed conduit for communication, but rather a generative site of fissures, shifts, and transformation.

The exhibition 'In a Nutshell In a Nut Shell I'm Not Sure' draws its title from a playful misreading and semantic shift of the English idiom ‘in a nutshell’. While the phrase typically signifies ‘to put it simply’, it is often miswritten as ‘in a nut shell’, a more literal and image-driven rendering that evokes the concrete imagery of nuts and shells. This interpretive detour opens a path for associative thinking. The addition of ‘I'm not sure’ arises from a phonetic slippage that extends the pun — juxtaposing idiomatic meaning with its misreading, the title sets the tone for a linguistic game of dislocation and multiplicity, echoing the exhibition’s exploration of how meaning is generated and transformed.

Framed by the notions of ‘misplacement’ and ‘transformation’, the exhibition invites five artists to approach language, the body, everyday experience, and symbols through various mediums — including painting, sculpture, ceramics, and moving image — to explore how meaning emerges through reinterpretation and playful divergence. Each artwork is positioned as an open-ended utterance: not in pursuit of a definitive statement, nor presupposing a single reading, but inviting viewers to drift, encounter, and generate their own pathways of understanding.

In this exhibition, Chang Wenwoan engages in witty and agile negotiation between thinking and making, exploring the edges of inspiration and authorship; Lee Kit explores the shifting dynamics between visual and power through an intricate interplay of image, body, and language; Yen Yuting employs ink to render traces and glitches of the digital environment, evoking a psychological landscape of absurdity and isolation amidst information overload. In a gesture of material translation, Jung Seungwon weaves digital language into traditional textile practices, extending the layers of time and perception; while Liao Chinhsiang interlaces brushwork and colour to summon the gaps of memory and a poetic visual flow.

Together, the five artists construct a constellation of interpretations and inquiries around memory, time, and perception — pointing towards a shared proposition: that meaning does not solely reside in the original form of language or image, but arises through processes of translation, reassembly, and transformation. The exhibition, through artistic practice, seeks to expand the dimensions of perception and meaning-making. Each work, like an open sentence, gestures toward a semantic shift — where even a minor turn can lead to new ways of seeing and understanding, prompting a reconfiguration of how we read, sense, and relate to the world.


Curatorial Team: Sara Wu, Sean Tseng

在日常生活裡,我們時常在對話與閱讀中誤聽、誤解或錯讀某些詞語,卻因此產生一種別出心裁的幽默與共鳴。這種現象在台灣諧音梗文化中特別蓬勃發展——看似無厘頭的語言轉換,其實承載著深厚的語感、語境與創造力。這些無處不在的諧音梗,好似總在日常生活中提醒我們:語言不是封閉的傳遞管道,而是一個充滿裂縫與變化的生成現場。

本次展覽「簡而言之,堅果貝殼,我也不確定」(In a Nutshell In a Nut Shell I’m Not Sure),源自對英文諺語 in a nutshell 的幽默誤讀與語意轉換。原意為「簡而言之」,卻常被誤拆為 in a nut shell,字面上解釋為「在堅果與貝殼中」,從抽象的概括轉為具象的畫面,開啟另一種聯想。此外,「我也不確定」則取自語音上的延伸聯想,將英文原句與誤解的意義並置,構成一場錯置與多重解讀的語言遊戲,也呼應展覽對語意生成與轉化的關注。


因此,本次展覽以「錯置」與「轉化」的角度出發,邀請五位藝術家從語言、身體、日常經驗與符號出發,透過繪畫、雕塑、陶藝與影像裝置等多樣媒材,探索語意如何在錯讀與再詮釋中浮現。展覽中的每件作品皆如一則等待閱讀的語句——它們不追求語意的終點,也不預設單一解讀,而是邀請觀者在閱讀與觀看中游移、碰撞,生成各自的理解路徑。

在這檔展覽中,張文菀以機智與幽默回應創作與靈感的邊界,在思考與實踐之間靈活轉換;李傑透過對影像、身體與語言的交錯與編排,探索觀看與權力之間的動態關係;顏妤庭則以水墨書寫數位語境中的干擾與痕跡,描繪資訊過載下荒謬而孤立的精神風景;在創作媒材的轉譯中,鄭丞媛(Jung Seungwon)融合編織與影像,開啟數位語言與傳統工藝之間的對話,延展時間與感知的層次;廖進祥則透過筆觸與色彩的交織,召喚記憶的縫隙與視覺的詩性流動。

五位藝術家的作品彼此交織,構築出關於記憶、時間與感知的多重詮釋與提問,也共同指向一個核心觀點:意義不僅存在於語言或圖像的原初形式,更在其被轉譯、重組與變異的過程中逐漸浮現。因此,本次展覽透過藝術實踐,試圖拓展感知與意義生成的維度——每件作品都像是一則開放的語句,如同諧音帶來的語義滑動,一個細微的轉向,便足以引導出嶄新的觀看視角與理解框架,進而促發對感知方式的重新部署與調整。


策展執行:吳依宣、曾彥翔


List of Artwork