A fleeting instant is too swift for the mind to grasp. We need tools to catch its form. We need technology to freeze our fleeting encounters with the world. The Polaroid that emerged seventy years ago was the precursor of the smartphone camera today, and it still delivers images without needing a visit to the lab.

The gap separating thought and form is the space reserved for artistry. The calligrapher's swift brush flashes past with hardly a thought, and the photographer presses the trigger as his mind grasps the form. The mark of the master is he who masters mindfulness.

CC Lu's photography skill was honed at work in his early engineering years, when he had to move around constantly to take Polaroids for construction site records. He took photos for himself at the same time, looking for views that he felt revealed truth in the unreal phenomenal world. The unreal he called the “abstract”, and the truth he called “daydreaming”. He looked for them in the colours and sensations of his daily encounters, and he tested them against his own sensual gut feelings. To overcome the difficulty of communicating with a single photo image, he preferred the presentation of images in groups. His apparent expertise with Polaroids is the result of much experimentation during these years.

The Polaroid is a photograph that comes with its own negative and developing chemicals, it tolerates all kinds of treatments and mistreatments, and produces surprises. CC's Polaroids are artworks situated halfway between photo image and painting, crossing visual reality and imaginary expression.

The digital image and the Polaroid belong to different modes of existence. One is made to remain permanently unchanged as an image, and the other comes with a physical body. Fixed in time like the digital image, the Polaroid doesn't die, but its body ages with grace, showing the beauty of time and maturity. The digital image, however, brings the message of unaging permanence and death in eternity.

“One Instant One Mind” displays both recent and early Polaroid works, including ones made four decades ago, which are presented in new arrangements, and selected in the context of the artist's current thinking. The exhibition reflects a renewed interest in this early technical medium, inspired by a visit last year to the graduate show of Academy of Visual Arts in Hong Kong Baptist University, where CC found to his surprise the use of Polaroids by a young artist. Revisiting one's past passions could be a form of penance, or the fulfilling of old promises, or simply a karmic return. There is a saying that authors are often embarrassed by their own youthful endeavours. This could be true, but the complaint often also hides the wish to revisit one's original inspiration. When the moment for a mindful revisit comes, fate should be allowed to run its course. What the fleeting instant offers the artist is yet another chance to gather his mind, and rise to forms that his art is destined to reach. This, in the artist's own words, means to create a new “abstraction” that evokes refreshing reveries of “daydreaming”.

One Instant One Mind Foreword

“One Instant One Mind” displays CC Lu's both recent and early Polaroid works, including ones made four decades ago, which are presented in new arrangements, and selected in the context of the artist's current thinking.

CC Lu's photography skill was honed at work in his early engineering years, when he had to move around constantly to take Polaroids for construction site records. He experiments on the Polaroids boldly with all kinds of treatments and mistreatments, and produces surprises. Through these trials and his careful arrangement, CC presents Polaroids that are situated halfway between photo image and painting, crossing visual reality and imaginary expression. The artworks in the exhibition successfully capture and represent the artist's psychological understanding of the world.

The exhibition reflects a renewed interest in this early technical medium, inspired by a visit last year to the graduate show of Academy of Visual Arts in Hong Kong Baptist University, where CC found to his surprise the use of Polaroids by a young artist. Revisiting one's past passions could be a form of penance, or the fulfilling of old promises, or simply a karmic return. There is a saying that authors are often embarrassed by their own youthful endeavours. This could be true, but the complaint often also hides the wish to revisit one's original inspiration. When the moment for a mindful revisit comes, fate should be allowed to run its course. What the fleeting instant offers the artist is yet another chance to gather his mind, and rise to forms that his art is destined to reach. This, in the artist's own words, means to create a new “abstraction” that evokes refreshing reveries of “daydreaming”.