Visual art, traditionally conceived as a tool for the pure representation of reality, has long been intertwined with philosophical inquiry. As early as the 5th century BCE, Plato's Allegory of the Cave challenged the truth of the world perceived through the eyes. Over time, human conceptions of reality have evolved, often revealing that what once appeared immutable now seems mythic. Today, how can we critically examine the facts we perceive? What we consider "truth" is often a partial, shared imagination—a relative worldview. Within this framework, art transcends mere representation of reality, becoming a discursive space: a site where distinct realities can coexist and be interrogated.

Existentialism questions the notion of the world as a purely material construct, acknowledging realities that are irrational or hidden from empirical observation. In 1979, Christian Norberg-Schulz, through a phenomenological and existential lens, proposed in Genius Loci: Towards a Phenomenology of Architecture that architecture had become dominated by utility and physical functionality, often neglecting the sensibilities and shifting spiritual states experienced in place. The "existential foothold," a concept he introduced, emphasizes the relationship between body, space, and presence, opening the possibility for art to intersect dynamically with contemporary visual culture and the construction of perspective.

Since the 1960s, theorists such as Louis Althusser have examined the ways ideology shapes our perception of reality, highlighting the inseparability of visual culture from the construction of consciousness. In this context, the boundary between the "real" and the "artistic" becomes blurred, echoing Plato's cave. Every artwork, as a reflection of reality, generates a subtle dialogue between "perspective" and "existential foothold," creating spaces where thought, perception, and experience converge.

When we suspend the primacy of rationality as the sole lens for understanding the world—without rejecting it entirely—art invites the coexistence of heterogeneous spatial and temporal experiences. Within the gallery or in front of a work, once-fixed notions of existence shift and oscillate, creating a discursive space in which "being" becomes a process of negotiation rather than a fixed fact.

Qi-Jian's works play with forward and backward spatial relationships, creating subtle dislocations that challenge perception. Through perspective cues and carefully arranged objects, flat planes of pigment are transformed into "places," where foreground and background interact to unsettle the viewer's existential position. Layered materials and deliberate misalignments create tension between the physical and psychological, highlighting the instability of presence.

Lin Hao-Bai's figurative paintings immerse the viewer in worlds that seem convincingly real, provoking uncertainty about one's own existential foothold. His works, from contemplative botanical series to urban landscapes, construct interiorized spaces that extend beyond mere representation, creating phenomenological loci in which the observer's presence is spiritually registered within the artwork.

Chiu Chien-Jen's narrative works construct collective consciousness in imagined spaces, blending memory, city, and identity. Figures roam these spaces like Baudelaire's flâneurs, simultaneously near and distant, engaging with a city that is present yet absent. Photography and painting intersect, generating a "here-now" collective site, echoing Norberg-Schulz's concept of genius loci while negotiating boundaries between rationality and sensibility, presence and absence.

In Chen Jie-Qiang's works, domestic spaces—sofas, laundry racks, windows—demarcate private zones, yet their boundaries remain permeable, evoking a theater of everyday life in flux. Time and space are traversed, walls are metaphorically collapsed, and the body becomes inseparable from the spatial phenomenon, merging perception, experience, and sensibility into an integrated whole.

Chen Hong-Quen's paintings interrogate "space" as multiple: as territory, as personal domain, and as socially protected space. Using layered pigments, repeated brushstrokes, and metapainting strategies, Chen renders both the temporality of artistic labor and the traversable dimensions of otherwise flat surfaces. Contradictions and transitions—organic and inorganic, natural and artificial, flat and three-dimensional—coexist, revealing multiplicities of presence and potentiality within the artwork.

Contemporary art emerges in a pluralistic framework that demands both firm individual positioning and respect for alternative perspectives. Rather than privileging a singular conception of "contemporaneity," it becomes essential to engage with diverse perspectives, allowing artworks to be appreciated across temporal, cultural, and formal boundaries.