To confess, I am completely a layperson to “skateboarding culture.” A sense of hesitation and disorientation arose initially when I was invited to write about the exhibition 202109152144 Skate Time Again, curated by Pei-Shin Hung at PTT Space. However, I soon realised that my understanding was too narrow. In this exhibition, "skateboarding" is more than an action sport; it serves as a cross-cutting semiotic tool to deconstruct the labyrinth we inhabit. It explores true freedom within thousands of curves found in the cracks of this modernised urban space, woven together by a spirit of resilience and courage to attempt and fail.

​

This giant labyrinthine city has no tolerance for failure or mistakes. It is a rigid grid structure composed of traffic lights synchronized to the second and strictly demarcated pedestrian crossings, an order built upon predictability and submission. We move through this maze day after day, living within an illusory sense of security provided by Google Maps. According to the book Four Times Through the Labyrinth by Olaf Nicolai and Jan Wenzel, this ancient pattern is employed everywhere, from urban design to the floor plan of IKEA:

​

“There is no doubt that a labyrinth makes us aware of our entanglements with space, the importance of knowing where we are and what we're heading for. We have to respond to the environment and at the same time feel that we can orient ourselves, take control, and make the right decisions at difficult times.”*1 - Olaf Nicolai

​

This is to say, to control and to orient are the fundamental self-centered survival guidelines of the human being. Thus, featuring the work of three artists and fellow skaters: Aaron Horse, Choco Tsao, and Huang-Sheng Su, the exhibition’s title marks a precise origin of resistance: 9:44 PM on 15 September, 2021. During the tough pandemic period immersed with fear and a pursuit of “appropriate” social distance, a skateboarding gathering for friends signified a regeneration. Despite three diverse artistic expressions, together the artists transcend the physical constraints of urban space and challenge the mechanism of the labyrinth.

​

To withstand the labyrinth, we must first change how we perceive it. In the gallery, halfway down the stairs to the exhibition room in the basement, I am immediately arrested by Huang-Sheng Su’s painting Skate for Nothing. These words, inscribed on Jessup griptape and cradled by a pair of tender hands, provide a contemplative hook for the journey. In contrast to today’s “attention crisis,” Su’s practice manifests an enchanting consistency in the philosophy of void to create blurred dynamics and interventions into linear time. By synthesising traditional materials such as ink and mineral pigment with digital aids, Su captures the kinetic energy of skateboarding across different planes. In Sk8#4 and Sk8#5, movements unfold simultaneously from multiple perspectives, reminiscent of the simultaneous frames in stop-motion animation. The curves turn polysemic. They are at once the trajectory of skateboarding in contemporary urban space and the jagged ridgelines of mountains in Chinese ink paintings. As the protagonist glides through both the urban grit and the misty mountains, Su dissolves the boundary between the labyrinth’s curves and the sublime, enveloping us in a profound, meditative vacuum.

​

While Su’s paintings turn inward, Aaron Horse’s work intervenes physically, targeting the violence of hostile architecture. His sculptures inject a spark of calm wildness and critical humor into the space. By physically warping the shape of barriers found in public facilities, Aaron Horse critiques the politics and power dynamics inherent in the entanglement of traffic regulations and public safety. On the ground floor, the work Kick the Can to the Playground-Bench stands as a radical transformation of the Chinese characters "No Parking" (請勿停車). It requires a deliberate tilt of the head to see how these once authoritative characters, now stretched and distorted, have been rendered into functionless street furniture. A tiny skateboard tucked beneath a bench leg typifies as a witty act of defiance against hostile architecture. Similarly, his painting Trap-3 adopts the imagery of park climbing frames where the gaze is ensnared within the structure, prompting us to imagine our own bodies navigating the constraints of the labyrinth.

​

Choco Tsao brings the resistance back to the visceral frequency of the body. Tsao’s videos and the interactive installation create an unsettling loop that mirrors the stagnation of living within the labyrinth. On the ground floor, the video Welcome, where a staircase transforms into an escalator in a dim, narrow reception, moves incessantly toward a dark terminal door, marking a threshold between private and public space. This visual entrapment transitions into Keep pushing in the basement, where the curves are temporarily translated into a raw frequency of vibration through viewers’ participation. By stepping onto a vibrating skateboard and navigating a joystick, viewers follow a protagonist through a virtual street, mimicking the “chaotic security” and visceral friction of skateboarding through the grid.

​

This intimate yet shared experience converges in the video work Breakpoint. Inspired by a mundane observation during a bus ride back to his hometown, the piece reflects a sense of alienation following a prolonged period of isolation while working from home as a freelance 3D animator. The sign “breakpoint” appears like a spectral calling, superimposed over the ever-changing landscape outside the window. As we follow the protagonist’s repetitive path from a cramped room onto a bus transformed into a ring shape, the sudden rise of theater lights suggests that this redundancy may be a performance or panopticon. For Tsao, the "break point" is a threshold—both an exit to leap out of the city’s predetermined grid and a portal to the cracks where we might finally confront a world obsessed with structured acceleration.

​

The exhibition concludes with a fascinating “Idea Box,” a collection of mood boards that serve as a nexus of the three artists’ lives. Skateboarding is not merely a sport or interest but a wellspring of creativity, an illumination of artistic inspiration against authority, and a profound expression of emotion, relationships, and action. As Nicolai suggests, the labyrinth can also be a “complex system of relations, full of inviting ways.”*2 This core spirit is lucidly expressed in this exhibition. Through the synergy of these three artists, every corner we turn in the gallery forms the curves and points for building our own invisible paths, forged from diverse perceptions, subversive spatial power, and fluctuating body rhythms that go far beyond our imagination. In this space, I am ready to lose control.

 

*1 Olaf Nicolai and Jan Wenzel, Four Times Through the Labyrinth, ed. Jan Wenzel. Translated by Sadie Plant (Spector Books, 2013), 173.

​

*2 Nicolai and Wenzel, Four Times Through the Labyrinth, 179.