Finger painting and fingerprints
I was rather late in making contact with Zhang Yu’s works. As I remember it, it was at an exhibition of abstract art in 2007. Two works were hung symmetrically right in the middle of the exhibition space. However, it was not the positioning and format of the display of the works that made me remember them. It was their technique and conceptions, which were different from the bulk of the other works. In simple terms, it was the fabrication format of using fingerprints instead of a brush that made me take notice.
Both in the West and in China, there are many painters and artists who have painted with their fingers instead of a brush. For instance Gao Qipei of the Lingnan School is remembered in the history of painting for using his fingers to make ink-and-wash paintings. However, the point of difference between those artists and Zhang Yu is that his works are not paintings but performances. “Performance art” is an expression used in Western art history and in the history of criticism, and applying it to Zhang Yu’s art is not strictly appropriate. In reality it is cultivation practice, that is, something practiced as self-cultivation.
Cultivation Practice and the Mind/Soul
Cultivation practice is not properly the activity of artists. It is a process of training for believers in Buddhism and Daoism. We know that it is a road that leads to the deepest and most distant places in the human heart, but at the end of this road there is a kind of wisdom that we seek. Reaching this wisdom does not require physical strength, climbing mountains or crossing water, nor does it require slogans or preaching. It requires peace and quiet, simplicity and clarity, and thus it is a mental and spiritual activity different from eating, drinking and making merry.
Zhang Yu has defined the subject of his latest exhibition as: “Cultivation • Practice”. On the surface of the words, this is very close to the cultivation practice of Buddhism and Daoism, but these are still different, for there are doctrines and standards present in the cultivation practice of Buddhism and Daoism. For instance, there are four points in the method of selecting cultivation practice: clarifying cause and effect, maintaining precepts and discipline, consolidating the believing mind, and choosing the gate through which to go. Zhang Yu, however, does not conform to any such category. Through his heart, eyes, mind, hands and the media of his choice, he uses a visual format to reach a kind of balance. The works we see today are non-religious performances and activities. He takes a notion and, through a transformation of energy, presents something mild and continuous.
Zhang Yu is a senior figure in Chinese contemporary art, and there are various views and positions on his various works from various periods. This is a phenomenon that follows from the public appearance of an artist’s works, and is not something that the artist himself can control and influence. The general opinion is that his Fingerprint series is important in Chinese contemporary art. It is worth being exhilarated about achieving this appraisal. However, can we enter deeper into the subject of fingerprints?
Category
As for the position of Zhang Yu’s works in Chinese contemporary art, it reminds me of a story told by the American artist Bill Viola at an exhibition at the Mori Art Museum Tokyo. Viola, who was Nam June Paik’s assistant for seven years, had failed to find the essence of art while with the great master, but once when he travelled to Kyoto and saw monks reciting scriptures, he became inspired. He listened intently to the chanting of sutras and the sound of the wooden fish, and pondered the fact that this sound had been the same for thousands of years, immutable not only today but also tomorrow and in the future. In the world of the monks there was no distinction between modern and non-modern. Bill Viola accordingly achieved enlightenment and established his unique view of artistic values.
In my view, Zhang Yu’s works are not subject to restrictions of time. He consciously feels his way to a code that slots in with the context. Fingerprints as such play no part in Chinese painting, nor do they have any stylistic affinities that can be neatly summarized. However, Zhang Yu previously operated in the core area of Chinese contemporary art, and if you look at his artistic track record, you will find that the many areas and tracks where he learned from others all lead to this solitary position. This is the result of cultivation practice.
Returning to origins
If the performance of fingerprinting is cultivation performance, then what is the language of fingerprints? It has to do with “oneness”. All Zhang Yu’s fingerprint works are made using just one finger.
The character for “one” (yi, 一) is the fundamental brushstroke of Chinese characters. It can also be, of course, a character in itself. It is often used for people and matters, and it is also the smallest number of physical things. At the philosophical level, however, “One” is the foundation of all things. “The Way produces One. One produces Two. Two produces Three. Three produces all things in the universe. All things in the universe carry Yin behind and Yang in front, letting the energies clash to make harmony.” (Laozi, Chapter 42). Laozi also says: “Heaven gets Oneness and thus is bright. Earth gets Oneness and thus is peaceful…. All things get Oneness and thus create.” (Laozi, Chapter 39). Ge Hong in Chapter 18 of the Inner Chapters of Baopuzi says: “Man can preserve Oneness, Oneness can also preserve Man.” What about art then? It needs to embrace Oneness before it can get back to the truth.
The fundamental meaning of Oneness as explained from a philosophical angle is “originating”, but in Zhang Yu’s works, “One” signifies a return to essentials, a return to origins. Thus we discover another aspect. This return goes through the performance format of “Oneness” (one finger) to reach the goal of “returning to Oneness”.
The saying “Beginning and End are as One” in Buddhist thought is exemplified in the copying of sutras. When you copy a part of the Diamond Sutra, the hardest thing is to maintain one state of mind from when you start writing until the end. It requires continuous balance and conservation. When the thoughts in your mind cannot focus, there may be some outside matter disturbing you (such as a sudden telephone call), and so on. Anything may cause your copying to fluctuate, that is, to deviate from the track of preserving Oneness. Thus, copying sutras does not serve the purpose of memorizing their contents, but of cultivating the skill of: “Beginning and End Are as One”.
What is difficult about Oneness? The difficulty is that it is a kind of continuous attitude. It is an activity controlled along an invisible line in your thinking.
Excited Insects
In a night when hibernating animals were awakening, when the weather was warming again, and catkins were appearing on the willows, I came to Zhang Yu’s studio in Huantie Arts City in Beijing. I was attracted by a fingerprint work hung horizontally on the wall. It was a fingerprint work made with water fingerprints. I discovered that white dots protruding slightly from the paper presented a condition of gradual change. Zhang Yu told me that this was an unfinished work. To make the parts made with water-prints maintain a balance with the parts untouched by water, it was necessary to add prints to the relatively sparse areas. I then realized that the apparently uniform and unchanging painting was a balance achieved only after much hard work. That peaceful atmosphere formed a reflection of the excited insects outside. It is thus only after we have been through very deep reading of his works that they can come to life in our feelings.
Counterpoint
Zhang Yu’s solo fingerprint works exhibition Cultivation • Practice only shows three works in the Today Art Museum. This exhibition format is a space that goes for the jugular: in the space in the main exhibition hall, which is 12.5 meters high and 12 meters wide by 30 meters long, the artist has installed only one half-folded and half-hanging red fingerprint work. The angle of its positioning, and the diagonal of the rectangular space, add a brilliant lighting framework, and the work and the room together produce a sense of suspense. We can call this work composed of xuan paper, vegetable dye and performance a minimalist installation.
Two other hanging scroll works are hung in the secondary exhibition spaces. They too hang with a curve from top to bottom, forming the shape of the Chinese character for “human”, ren: 人. At first sight, they suggest to the viewer that the artist has made the ceiling heaven, and the floor earth. The work between the two then is “man”. This would be a metaphor to be explained as the ancient structural connection between “heaven, earth and man”. Of these two works, one uses water fingerprints, and the other features ink fingerprints. They present the pure connection between matter, performance and idea. As I understand it, this is the counterpoint of seeking the self in the universe.
Perception
During the great Chinese contemporary art movement of the 1980s, Zhang Yu was a driving force in exploring contemporary ink-and-wash painting. As in all art movements, there were many participants to start with, but the ones ultimately precipitated were few. Zhang Yu is one of the few who transcended those collectives, and he is a leader in the field. He has extended and expanded the concept we have of ink painting, and has made the spiritual part of it explicit to a wider audience. The morphology of presentation is no longer that of ink-and-wash, but generally, if one mentions Zhang Yu’s name, people in the world of art will associate it with ink painting. So when did Zhang Yu leave the ink-and-wash circle behind?
Zhang Yu began his avant-garde explorations – his fingerprinting – back in 1991. In China, the avant-garde is often martyred. Although Zhang Yu knew the value orientation of his works, it was difficult for anyone to be able to accept the format of fingerprinting in the artistic and social conditions of the time. He was wrongly considered a finger painter. Wisely, Zhang Yu cloistered himself and only began his fingerprinting work afresh ten years later.
Fingerprints are non-painting works. First, they have rejected the two aesthetic standards of “pictography” (xiangxing, 象形) and “free style expression” (xieyi, 写意) that have continued as the touchstones of aesthetic awareness for more than a thousand years. Second, in these works we are unable to find structural factors capable of exciting our visual enthusiasm. Faced with a fingerprint work, we are unable to sense the existence of melody. There is sound but no music. There is tinge but no colour. These are works that follow Zhang Yu’s cultivation practice, “appearances” presented before our feeling. They have sound but do not sound, just as all the flowing liquids in the world that we cannot hear have sounds. Through our sensory systems we perceive the existence of quietness.
Sounds of heaven
In the natural world there is the sound of the wind, the sound of birds, of running water. We can call the realm where art becomes thoroughly natural: “sounds of heaven”. Now the expression “sounds of heaven” (tianlai, 天籁) was originally coined by Zhuangzi in his chapter on Unifying (Qiwulun, 齐物论). Its theme is: all things are unified. It is directed at our kaleidoscopic world where what all of us see is different in size and innumerable in its variety, and argues the point of view that there are no differences between all these things.
“Sounds of heaven” is only one of three concepts that Zhuangzi mentions, namely sounds of man, sounds of earth and sounds of heaven. “Sounds” (lai, 籁) refers to a noise or din, a sound or agitation or restlessness. The sounds of earth are the various physical sounds emitted by the earth. The sounds of man are the hubbub and cacophony of humans. What are the sounds of heaven? Everything in the world is different. Each thing forms its own appearance. The sounds of heaven are the sounds of earth harmonized with the sounds of man. What this presents is a quiet scene. In my view, what Zhang Yu’s works present us with is the harmonious sound of heaven that transcends the sounds of earth and man. Using the format of: “All things return to Oneness”, Zhang Yu has expressed the conception that “All things are unified.” We can call art that has reached this realm, “Sounds of Heaven”.
15 March 2011, Postmodern City
Translated by Archibald McKenzie/Wen Zai 2 April 2011