An alley and an empty chair----the fourth definition of a chair
由巷的旧椅-----对世界的第四种解释
由巷尽头的一把旧椅，承载着一段段平凡而真实的人生。离合悲欢，喜颜愁情，沉淀是那些斑驳，将这这世间的忙碌清晰刻录。静静地， 他便这样一直等待着，等待着那样一场不期而遇。
In 1967 Joseph Kosuth created an art piece that highlighted the movement of conceptualism which advocated art being as and only as an idea. Conceptual art determinately renounced itself of the formalism that played a big part in the art world previously. Echoing this movement, Kosuth cleverly produced a work that transfigured art into a philosophical issue. One and three chairs was a simple installation composed of an actual chair, a picture of the real chair, and a dictionary definition of the word "chair". However, this seemingly simple display aroused a sophisticated question of how this world was supposed to be interpreted.
It is a question that has been asked for centuries. And the answers vary from one doctrine to another. Here, Kosuth directly puts forward all the possible ideas and potential answers that the world seeks to give, rather than arguing a point with arduous work. The display of chairs in different ways clarified ways of understanding the world-----perception, empiricism, and linguistics.
Therefore, we are tempted to believe that those three ways summarize the understanding of the world. It is true that we more or less fall into one of those three categories in the technical and intellectual sense. However, what has been overlooked is the cultural matters, in which human ideas are rooted.
This is the picture that I took by accident while I was threading through the small alleys of Gusu city. When I came across this empty chair usually occupied by elderly inhabitants in the neighborhood, I was struck by the aged look. Time had marked the chair with stories that nobody ever recounted, with pieces of memories that this world tried to put behind, with tears of this age that shed for the ever-ending struggles of a busy life.
The chair itself becomes a narrative that had nothing to do with intellectual knowledge. But it is simply a poetic story that tells the culture of this city.
