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Critical Annotation

My research focuses on developing my concept of Daoism and my painting practice. In the concept parts, I investigate different contemporary artists and how to cross-fertilise Daoism in their artwork. In terms of visual research, I study painters from distinct times and cultural backgrounds. I also seek meaning in artworks that use the same elements as me in their creation.

Daoism reminds people that it is narrow minded to judge the world subjectively and from the height of the universe of heaven and earth and the height of human society. (1) Cai Guo-Qiang’s childlike imagination transforms the Daoist cosmological perspective into a series of Projects for extraterrestrials. (2) Xu Bing’s Gravitational Arena transforms this cosmological perspective into a reading perspective that the audience cannot reach that transcends the space of the gallery. (3) From a cosmic view of the Earth, all of us are the travellers in the universe. There will be no misunderstanding between cultures. Letting everything free wander is my approach to pursuing the freedom of spirituality as well as my main creative methodology. 

Another important concept at the heart of the Daoist universe is that everything lacks an enduring essence. In Cai Guo-Qiang’s The Century with Mushroom Clouds, Cai’s miniature mushroom clouds symbolise this impermanence. (4) The record in Song Dong’s Water Diary disappears as the water evaporates, which visualises the artist moving along the path of life to the Dao. (5) This changeable essence of Dao has heightened my desire to capture more beautiful moments and experience the eternal world for an instant. The vivid brushstrokes and those moving motifs such as clouds, raindrops, wind, or flowers are my visual representation of aesthetic moments.

I depict various circles throughout my projects. Lindy Lee creates thousands of delicate holes in Secret World of a Starlight Ember inspired by the milky silver of the cosmos. (6) The first circle in Song Dong’s Round represents his love for his daughter. (7) I think those bubbles, which have no beginning and no end, are a symbol of the universe and are perfect to represent how I feel when I experience the present moment in fullness.

The gestures inHuang Yongping’s Thousand-Armed Bodhisattva are a reflection and examination of the diverse and complex cultural contexts of the contemporary world and a temporal and spatial coordinate for contemporary art. (8)The gesture inShen Yuan Gazelle represents the artist’s sorrow and loneliness. (9) Huang Yongping and Shen Yuan are soulmates. This work was made after Huang Yongping's sudden death. I think sometimes the partial appearance of a body part is better than the whole human body, leaving a rich space for imagination.

In terms of visual research, Guo Xi’s ‘three distances’ of the principle of cavalier perspective and Min Qiji’s illustration of The Story of the Western Chamber inspired me to use traditional Chinese painting construction in my pictorial space. (10) Wolfe Von Lenkiewicz borrows from classic oil painting construction, encouraging me to try larger painting compositions and content narratives. (11)

Reference:

http://worldinsand.blogspot.com/2013/10/blog-post_18.html

Schama, Simon. Odyssey and Homecoming: Cai Guo-Qiang. DelMonico Book·D.A.P., New York, 2021.

https://www.xubing.com/en/work/details/686?year=2022&type=year#686

Thomas, Taliesin. “Explosion into Emptiness: Daoist Reverberations in the Art of Cai Guo-Qiang.” Journal of Daoist Studies 16 (2023): 105-126. doi:10.1353/dao.2023.0005. 

Ortis, Jessica (2011) “The Art of Being: A Study of the Relationship between Daoism and Art,” Journal of Undergraduate Research at Minnesota State University, Mankato: Vol. 11 , Article 11. Available at: https://cornerstone.lib.mnsu.edu/jur/vol11/iss1/11 

https://www.timeout.com/sydney/art/secret-world-of-a-starlight-ember 

https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/eWRW107jLiBidOudqdsmOw 

http://www.redbrickartmuseum.org/exhibitions/thousand-armed-guanyin/?lang=en

http://www.redbrickartmuseum.org/exhibitions/shen-yuan-angling/?lang=en

Wu Hung. Space in art history. Shanghai: Shanghai renming chubanshe: 2018.

https://www.chinesearthistory.com/xixiangj

11. https://www.chinesearthistory.com/xixiangjihttps://wolfevonlenkiewicz.com/about/

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1. Sin Wai Kin <I have had to unlearn so many narratives>

In this video, Sin Wai Kin said Daoism helped her to try to undo binaries that have to do with just being human and try to undo every false dichotomy. Not only gender, but thinking about life and death, self and others, dreaming and waking. (1)  It reminds me that China scholar Karl-Heinz Pohl emphasises that ‘Not to discriminate this and that as opposites is the essence of Dao’. (2) I think the greatest charm of Daoist philosophy is to remind people that it is narrow minded to judge the world subjectively. Everything in the world has its own ways of operation. We should learn to co-exist with all diverse things and experience more beautiful moments in our short lives.

Reference:

(1) https://www.artbasel.com/stories/meet-the-artists-victoria-sin-wai-kin-sin?lang=en

(2) Pohl, Karl-Heinz. Chinese thought in a global context: a dialogue between Chinese and Western philosophical approaches. Brill:Leiden, Boston, Koln, 1999. 

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2. Cai Guo-Qiang <Project for Extraterrestrials> Since 1990s

‘Cai was born in China at the end of 1957. He moved to Japan in late 1986, where he spent nearly nine years before departing for the United States in 1995. ’American writer Taliesin Thomas mentioned that during this time, ‘Cai became aware of a certain notion of ‘otherness’ and the fraught nature of the East-West dynamic by way of his exposure to the Japanese and their struggle with Western culture. Motivated by his desire to move beyond these issues and the hackneyed discussion surrounding the Eastern versus the Western mindset, Cai began his Project for Extraterrestrials series, a body of work that aimed to communicate with being beyond planet Earth. These works represented his desire to connect with outer space and the universe.’ I think Cai’s projects contain his transformation of traditional Chinese culture within contemporary art. At the same time, this project includes his desire to be understood by the outside world. The misunderstanding and difference between Eastern and Western culture would be diminished if we view the Earth from the cosmic perspective. At that time, all humans become travellers on Earth. 

During my MFA studies, I am also occasionally confused by my Chinese identity. I understand the difference between Eastern and Western thoughts. Sometimes, I feel I am an otherness. However, I do not want to symbolise Chinese culture. I think I am an artist, not only a Chinese artist. I believe I own infinite possibilities in making art. Artists have a core of freedom to create. Freedom is one of charming of the art world. When I saw the free-wandering birds on the grass in Melbourne, it reminded me I recalled the birds of the Ming Dynasty painter Bada Shanren(1626-1705), and I felt that these animals were not different in the past and present. I hope my works can share an aesthetic and joyful experience without being restricted by culture.

As the project develops, I have been thinking about how to describe my concept in my own words, not just quote something from Daoism. I feel that my thoughts are always led by my paintings. Sometimes I find it difficult to put into words what my work can contribute to an exhibition. I need to think more and practice expressing my artistic concepts through language. It is essential to express my work in language that helps me envision larger worlds for future creations. When I reread the research I did in Studio 1, I found that my work had already completed what I had envisioned at the time.

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3. ‘Zhu Da , also known by his pen name Bada Shanren (1626-1750) , was a late-Ming (1368-1644)—and early-Qing dynasty Chinese painter, calligrapher, and poet. Zhu was mentally ill and displayed erratic behaviour. He was related to the House of Zhu, which got destroyed and executed by the new Qing dynasty. Fearing that he would also be purged and executed, he fled to a Buddhist temple and learned the teachings of Chan (Zen) Buddhism, becoming a monk for 30 years.’

Bada Shanren’s paintings embody his view of life that the ordinary mind is the Dao. What he paints is an inner spirit that is involved in things but transcends them. A flower under his brush is a perfect and complete world. At the beginning of the Qing Dynasty(1644-1911), as a member of the Ming imperial family, his status was inopportune. However, he did not give up his sincere emotional experience of life and used his unique brushwork to create many self-contained worlds that transcend the limits of time and space. I borrowed his deer and fish to construct a spiritual roaming that belongs to me.

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4. Cai Guo-Qiang <Humanity’s Epitaph: Project for Extraterrestrials No. 13> 2020 Gunpowder and ink on paper, mounted on wood as six-panel screen, 230 x 465 cm

This is my favourite work in Cai’s Project for Extraterrestrials. Cai’s statement:‘this is my project from 1990. I wanted to construct a coffin-shaped block of frozen sea water containing microorganisms and then send it off to wander the cosmos containing the bio-information of Earth. I have transcribed the work’s description several times. Every time, it was as if I were floating through the cosmos alongside it. ’ (1) Behind this project is the artist’s expansive worldview in which humans can draw on their imagination in travelling to the cosmos. Death is no longer a heavy burden in Cai’s art world. Both of life and death can become poetry.

Xu Bing  <Gravitational Arena> 2021-2022 Exhibition: Museum of Art Pudong, Shanghai This installation art is founded on the law of perspective, but it does not end with visuality.

‘Stretched by gravity, this sky-dimming Square Word Calligraphy reaches the ground. While creating a distorted textual space, it simultaneously immerses the viewers into an interplay between “seeing” and “reading”. The Square Word Calligraphy contained in this work is transcribed from an excerpt by philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. This creates an arena fraught with tensions and gravitational forces. The characters, distorted by space, fall into a chaos of illegibility, with each element pointing to an ‘ideal perspective’ suspended outside the exhibition hall.’ Xu Bing’s work demonstrates ‘our thinking is inevitably influenced by various languages, resulting in potential blind spots. These blind spots may also exist beyond linguistic demonstrations. ’(2)

I have put these two works together because I think they have both, through their own understanding, transformed the Daoist cosmological perspective into their own artistic language. Laozi’s cosmology views our present world from outside the universe. It does not look at the world from the perspective we are familiar with, but rather from above, from the height of the universe of heaven and earth, and the height of the human society. Just as we find it strange and unfamiliar when the space shuttle sends back pictures of Earth from outer space. (3) Cai Guo-Qiang’s childlike and poetic imagination transforms the Daoist cosmological perspective into a series of projects for extraterrestrials. Xu Bing’s worktransforms the Daoist cosmological perspective into a reading perspective that the audience cannot reach that transcends the space of the gallery. These two works make me wonder whether the Daoist cosmological perspective can be transformed into my way of seeing the world and whether it can inspire me to see the present life from a larger perspective.

Reference: 

Schama, Simon. Odyssey and Homecoming: Cai Guo-Qiang. DelMonico Book·D.A.P., New York, 2021.

https://www.xubing.com/en/work/details/686?year=2022&type=year#686

http://worldinsand.blogspot.com/2013/10/blog-post_18.html

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5. Cai Guo-Qiang <Ramble in the Cosmos> 2023

Cai Guo-Qiang had an exhibition Ramble in the Cosmos-From Primeval Fireball Onward in Tokyo in 2023. The title ‘Primeval Fireball’ represented a merging of Cai’s then understanding of astrophysics as well as a reflection on Laozi’s conception of the origin of the universe. (1) ‘There was something formless and perfect before the universe was born. It is serene. Empty. Solitary. Unchanging. Infinite. Eternally present. It is the mother of the universe. For lack of a better name, I call it the Dao.’(2)

Cai’s exhibition inspired me to seek a clear Daoist concept to underpin my subject matter. I think Zhuangzi’s ‘The heaven and the earth and I came into existence at the same time; all things in the world and I are one uniformity’.(3) This concept underpins my fundamental creative concept of creating a sense of happiness by going with the flow of life and becoming one with nature within my harmonious cosmos. I feel it is a very fortunate life experience to breathe with lovely animals and plants on the boundless earth. My project is a documentary about this affective experience of living in harmony with all things.

Reference：

(1) https://www.nact.jp/english/exhibition_special/2023/cai/

(2) https://www.organism.earth/library/document/tao-te-ching

(3) Zhuangzi, Rongpei Wang, Xuqing Qin, and Yongchang Sun. Zhuangzi. Di 1 ban. Changsha: Hunan ren min chu ban she, 1999.

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Thierry De Cordier <The Encyclopedic Palace, Venice Biennale Venice, Italy> 2013

Thierry De Cordier <Zeeberg> 2011

Mountains, seascapes, and desolate landscapes are some of the subjects that Thierry De Cordier drew. They also effectively depict the basic elements of the landscape and light of Northern Europe, drawing inspiration in part from the enormous, black and white topographies of 17th and 18th century Chinese painting. His paintings' gloomy sky and inky oceans convey sorrow, with the most dramatic landscapes occurring when waves and mountain cliffs combine to represent the powers of nature in a single primeval picture.

The motif of water is, in some way, my understanding of Daoist nothingness. Laozi mentioned that ‘Myriad objects (all objects) under heaven (in the world) are begotten from having, and having is originated from nothingness. ’ I employ water to connect the myriad objects in my painting. Water is a popular motif for artists from different times and cultural backgrounds. I think the infinite watery themes in my work can lead me to encounter unknown and curious adventures during my creation. 

Reference:

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7. Wolfe Von Lenkiewicz <Garden of Earthly Delights> 2012 

The artwork of Wolfe von Lenkiewicz combines classic oil painting techniques with cutting-edge technology including algorithmic diffusion models and node-based artificial intelligence systems. His works transcend chronological boundaries and act as a link across many eras.  Lenkiewicz encourages me to use historical narrative structures and typical art-historical symbols to tell the contemporary story.

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8. Song Dong <Round> 2023 

Song Dong’s Round underpins Laozi’s ‘True perfection seems imperfect, yet it is perfectly itself. True fullness seems empty, yet it is fully present.’  (1) Song can vaguely touch the energy and awareness brought by ‘True perfection seems imperfect’. There is no such thing as complete perfection in the world; there is a void and blur zone that depends on the perspective of observation. Song spends a lot of time re-adjusting and reassembling the edges and corners of the old window panes and finally builds an imperfect circle. Song said: ‘If connected all the vertices, there is a circle. But it is made up of squares, it is like a compressed version of the universe and a virus at the same time.’ The first piece in the Round series was a gift for Song’s daughter, who is going abroad to study music. Song said: ‘I want to tell her that the world is made up of all different windows, and she can now push open another window and see the world.’ Not only does it contain a father’s love and care, but it also shows a dialectical and unified view of the world, an artistic language that Song Dong has long insisted on. Finding the square in the circle, finding the nothingness in the having, and finding the meaning in the euphonious absurdity, Song’s art has always hovered at the two ends of the seemingly opposing spectrum but has cleverly achieved harmony and unity.

Song Dong’s round represents love and his interpretation of Daoist fullness and emptiness. I also drew various circles in my project. They could be the bubbles that come out of the fish’s mouth, the Earth we live on, the sun, or the moon that record time for us. Sometimes, I think the circle is the best visual expression of the feeling that the present moment perfect is in my life. I want those beautiful and joyful moments to have no particular beginning or end, and to be recorded an eternity in my work.

Reference:

 (1) https://www.organism.earth/library/document/tao-te-ching

(2) https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/eWRW107jLiBidOudqdsmOw

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9. Shen Yuan <Gazelles> 1990-2020

‘Gazelles is taken from the name of a student residence in Provence, France, which was Shen Yuan’s first destination with Huang Yongping after arriving in France in 1990. ’ Unfortunately Huang Yongping has passed away due to a sudden heart attack in 2019. ‘This work used a double pillow made of wax, which is lightly framed on one side by the inner iron spring of a single Simmons mattress. In the centre of the iron frame is a female hand made of bronze, on which rests a dragonfly made of bronze wire, around which several other dragonflies also pass. ’ The work tells the story of the past but also expresses the mystery of time between heaven and earth.’ The gesture in this work represents the artist’s sorrow and loneliness. The vaguely visible dragonfly adds a bit of hope to this layer of solitude. Perhaps in the invisible world, their souls can still communicate. I think sometimes the partial appearance of a body part is better than the whole human body, leaving the audience with a rich space for imagination.

Reference: http://www.redbrickartmuseum.org/exhibitions/shen-yuan-angling/?lang=en

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10. Huang Yongping <Thousand-Armed Bodhisattva> 2019 

‘This work is eighteen meters high, with one thousand Guanyin arms grafted onto the form of Marcel Duchamp’s work The Bottle Rack. The bodhisattva’s hands hold or support Buddhist instruments, animals, plants, daily necessities, and waste. The piece is all-encompassing; it is a reflection and examination of the diverse and complex cultural contexts of the contemporary world and a temporal and spatial coordinate for contemporary art. ’

I have a very intimate feeling when I see this work because I depict various Buddhist gestures in my projects. On the one hand, I think those changeable hands record my changeable inner feelings. On the other hand, my painting can be seen as a mythical landscape. If the viewer appreciates my painting from a gestural perspective, it would become a visual game; all the pictorial world can be seen as a miniature amusement.

Reference: http://www.redbrickartmuseum.org/exhibitions/thousand-armed-guanyin/?lang=en

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11. Huayan Temple or Huayan Monastery is a Buddhist temple located in Datong, Shanxi, China. 

Huayan Temple has been burned down and rebuilt several times. The wall painting in Huayan Temple use natural scenery such as rocks, clouds, rivers, trees and so on, which is more flexible and natural than the ink line grid. The successful use of perspective makes the composition of the grand picture distinctive and orderly. The clouds surrounding the story in the wall painting inspired me to use the clouds to link different scenes to form my narrative in my project.

Reference: http://www.wenwuchina.com/a/19/91278.html

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12. Zhang Hongtu <Early Spring> 1998

When I was researching Guo Xi’s work, I found Zhang Hongtu using Van Gogh’s painting style to recreate Guo Xi’s mountain and water painting, I think it is interesting to painting traditional Chinese landscape in a new way.

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Guo Xi (1000-1090) &lt;Early Spring> 1072

Guo Xi <Level-Distance View of Rocks (Keshi Pingyuan)> 1078

13. Guo Xi (1000-1090) <Early Spring> 1072

Guo Xi <Level-Distance View of Rocks (Keshi Pingyuan)> 1078

‘In Guo Xi’s The Lofty Message of Forest and Stream, Guo defined the ‘three distances’ of principle of cavalier perspective. Looking up to the mountain’s peak from its foot is called the high distance. From in front of the mountain looking past it to beyond is called deep distance. Looking from a nearby mountain at those distant is called the level distance. This spatial construction maximises the image’s own capacity as a bearer of ‘its own message’. ’I use this spatial construction to create my narrative in my project One Day.

Reference: Wu Hung. Space in art history. Shanghai: Shanghai renming chubanshe: 2018.

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14. Min Qiji <The Story of the Western Chamber> 1640

‘The romance of Western Chamber is one of the most famous literary Chinese works. This iconic illustration Scenes from Romance of the Western Chamber is painted from a unique perspective—the viewer sees the plot from above as it plays out in a series of stone houses and courtyards.’ In my project Fate, I borrowed the two pictorial space in this illustration to depict my narrative. 

Reference: https://www.chinesearthistory.com/xixiangji

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Huang Rui <Dao and No Dao> 2020

Xu Bing <The Character of Characters> 2012

15. Huang Rui’s Dao and No Dao series conveys his understanding of Daoism. Huang builds a new three-dimensional space on the flat canvas by exploring the relationship between the intensity of the oil paint, the movement of the brush, the white space, and the image. (1)Xu Bing’s The Character of Characters is an animation, that starts with the writing process of the simplest Chinese character, ‘–one’, which is also the starting point of the Dao. (2) Both of Huang and Xu’s works mentioned Laozi’s ‘the Dao gave birth to one, from that appeared two, then three, and from three generated the myriad things of the universe’.

This Daoist universe is hiding in my painting, and Dao is a way to know myself, a path to understand the world, and a method to establish my inner peace and harmony with my outer life.

Collaging canvases is my way of interpreting this Daoist universe from a small to growing a big world. Because ‘three’ can produce all the things, the project I formed with four groups of canvases implies an infinite vitality. The word ‘give birth’ is like a creator enriching my imagination to create a vibrant world where myriad things freely wander by vivid brushstrokes.

Reference: 

(1) https://ucca.org.cn/exhibition/huang-rui-ways-of-abstraction/audios/

(2) https://unframed.lacma.org/2015/06/23/character-characters-xu-bing%E2%80%99s-exploration-chinese-and-their-language

(3) https://www.learnreligions.com/tao-te-ching-verse-42-3183165

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16. Song Dong <Water Diary> 1995-present 

Song Dong’s Water Diary reflects his understanding of Daoism. Song recorded his thoughts on a stone with a calligraphy pen dipped in water. The record disappears as the water evaporates, which visualises the artist moving along the path of life to the Dao. According to the academic research cross-fertilising Daoism and this artwork, American researcher Jessica Ortis stated that ‘Daoism is very concerned with creating a marriage with the natural forces of the world, rather than going against them’. Exploring the interpretation of Daoism becomes a natural power to support me in allowing anything to happen in painting practice. In Chinese art, the fog, mist, or clouds are often seen as being representations of the Dao because each element shares the same characteristics that moves and permeates through the universe just like Dao. The clouds, raindrops, fog, wind, flowers, and fruits I depict in my projects are my understanding for this Daoist impermanence.

Reference: Ortis, Jessica (2011) “The Art of Being: A Study of the Relationship between Daoism and Art,” Journal of Undergraduate Research at Minnesota State University, Mankato: Vol. 11 , Article 11. Available at: https://cornerstone.lib.mnsu.edu/jur/vol11/iss1/11