Shih Meng Hsin, born in 1995 and recipient of the first prize from the Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts in 2020, will hold his second solo exhibition “Sand That Stuck On My Shoes” at the Michael Ku Gallery. This exhibition will also serve as a concurrent show with the upcoming “Taipei Dangdai.”

The artist aspires to hold an exhibition as a tribute to the friendships of youth that have continued to this day.

Upon returning from the island travels, the artist retreated to the familiar confines of the studio, reflecting on the deeply etched memories experienced with companions of youth. Employing molding, replication, and assembly techniques, the artist seeks to resurrect the essence of the island’s landscapes from memory, sifting through collective experiences to compose the sea’s faded tableau with memory fragments and bodily sensories.

“He always picked up something shiny on the soft sand, yet it was not the objects that glittered, but your eyes. The experience of diving together was also profound; the moment we leaped, time seemed to suspend us together in the air, our skin slick with the sun’s fervor and the grains of sand, all vanishing into the ocean’s embrace. The sea breeze gently blew, and the island’s goats and agaves remained there.”

How can one craft memories that linger in the mind and body? If memories could be shaped and touched, how would they be presented? Sand That Stuck On My Shoes is like a scene inadvertently brought back during a trip, stored in the heart, assembling things seen on the island: the sea breeze, the waves, the sandy shores, and the goats and greenery on the cliffs. These daily island sights, transformed through molding and replica materials, become a puzzle that cannot be perfectly assembled, filled with gaps.

Sand That Stuck On My Shoes presents neither the footwear nor the sand itself; instead, it unveils the visage of an obscured island, slowly emerging at the horizon’s edge.