Nilo Ilarde's artwork "Erased Eraser"

翻看sketchbook，偶然看到曾寫下的這段感想，把它記錄下來，因為我真是蠻喜歡這件作品。

——Let the fleeting concept of erasure condense into a timeless still frame.

Filipino artist Nilo Ilarde's artwork "Erased Eraser" erases fifteen erasers until their forms completely disappear, then uses resin to cast the remaining eraser shavings back into their original shapes. In this artwork, the act of erasing becomes the process of creation. The form of the eraser seems to remain, but can the reassembled remnants of vanishing still be considered the original object?

The function of an eraser is to eliminate unwanted words, erode its own form to erase undesired traces. However, these traces still persist in another form (eraser shavings), leaving their mark in the world.——The act of erasure gives birth to something new simultaneously. From eraser to eraser shavings, and then to a new resin eraser, it appears to be a cycle, but it undergoes several transformations in between. The same shape undergoes visual changes, highlighting the attempt to erase as a factual reality. It also serves as evidence of the existence of those vanished traces.

——讓消逝這一短暫抽象的概念，凝結成一個永恆靜止的畫面。

菲律賓藝術家Nilo Ilarde的作品《Erased Eraser》，把十五塊橡皮擦至形體完全消失，再用樹脂將殘留的橡皮屑重新鑄成原來的橡皮形狀。在這份作品中，擦除這一行為，成為製造的過程，橡皮的形態最終好像存留下來，但重新堆砌的消逝之物，還可算是原來的物事嗎？

橡皮的功用，在消去不想保留的文字，藉着磨蝕自己的形體，抹去不想留下的痕跡，可是這些痕跡仍是會以另一種形式（橡皮屑）在世上留存——消去的同時就會有新的誕生。由橡皮、橡皮屑，到新的樹脂橡皮，看似是循環，中間卻已經歷幾個轉化，相同的形狀卻在視覺上有所改變，把企圖擦除這一行為事實彰顯出來，也正是那些消逝的痕跡曾經存在的證明。