3D

Yin and Yang elements play the important roles in eastern history, as well as it influents the way of everyday livings. Even after I landed in the west, that kind of thinking logic has not be changed. During some time, I feel like that I could see those two elements are everywhere even in the west.

A series works started from that time on:

The idea of following work is from two Chinese characters 阴 & 阳( image 1). I reshaped and combined some parts of the both characters after the discovery of the most important element that they both shared( image 2) . I created two new figures which represent male and female. Two figures played a dramatic roles on the paper. Sometimes they are parted and sometimes they are together. This series lithograph works were printed on the Chinese traditional paper. I wondered how many “Romeo and Juliet” lived in China.

I had received a wedding invitation from one of my Italian friend at that time. Yin and Yang elements came to my mind again. I know that Yin and Yang elements are not literally translation from man and woman. They are changeable and also could live inside of each other like anima and animus. Love changes man and woman, love also connects woman and man. Therefore “Woman, Man and Love” formed in this triptych ink painting.

Chinese calligraphy is a living art form in my heart since I was little. I started write Chinese calligraphy with my grandfather when I was 6. Writing calligraphy with black ink and Chinese bush on Xuan paper is a part of Chinese traditional education. The practice takes place everyday. The old master says: One´s hand writing represents oneself. If those ink strokes can show the character of a person, could I show the calligraphy strokes into different ways? different dimensions maybe?

I thought of the horse figure in my way too.

The Dream Bag
The drive of making this bag comes from the people who are working as construction builders in China. I’ve seen them work hard in foreign cities. They work for the other people’s good living place, nice residence environment, and modern homes. Their families are living in the sheds and shanty houses with them anywhere they have to work at. But, everywhere they go, they have only the cheap plastic bag with them, no suitcases, and no luggage.

I think that bag carries the builders’ dream of a living place for themselves and their families.

Kiwi Bird is for the exhibition of “Monument of Freedom”.
I had my own questions about freedom: Who is calling for freedom? What does it mean to them? Do they know what it means to the others?
Struggling with these questions I decided to make a kiwi bird with two wings, a kind of chimera of peace, a wish that they could have a pair of wings and fly away from the ground as free as the other birds. But the wings are made by chicken nets, a sign of confinement. A “winged kiwi” is a mixture of natures, a bird that cannot fly! As an artwork it is a symbol of transformation, like the worm that becomes a butterfly: a kiwi with the wings of confined imagination.

Who Stole the Space? This is one of the works that has my thoughts on our living environment. The idea is from a series interview like this:

¨The botanist said, Plant A grew, flourished by expanded its living space.
The zoologist said, Animal A were evolved then migrated from water to land.
The anthropologist said, Human kinds discovered the power of fire therefore they gave up the caves, got down from the trees and set their feet on the ground.

The botanist said, Plant A took over plant B´s space.
The zoologist said, Animal A invaded plant A´s territory.
The anthropologist said, Humans learnt to use tools to cut the trees and driven machines to build houses.

The botanist said, Plant A was stolen because its aggressive growth also attracted other living creatures and became their food.
The zoologist said, Animal B was stolen because its enormous appetites finished all the eatable plants until nothing to eat.
The anthropologist said, Human´s machines has driven into the mountains and the sea because of their greed, fear and shortsighted.

Who stole the space of Plant A?
Who stole the space of Animal A?
Who stole the space of Human?¨

Baby Carriage
In this occasion I went completely out of the familiar area of Chinese arts. The medium, the content, the realisation of the works are really universal artistic subjects and devices, but at that point also totally alien to me: the senselessness of war, represented through the use of available scrap materials. The universal philosophical concerns of life and death, symbolic and representational. What a pram represents is not what is symbolised in Baby Carriage.

Mustard Seed Forest
The work is based on the series of Chinese books 芥子园画传 Jie Zi Yuan Hua Zhuan(The Mustard Seed Garden Manual of Painting, 1679); classics of Chinese traditional ink painting. Mustard Seed Forest “translates” the traditional Chinese aesthetic ideas into a contemporary atmosphere through a non-related medium (sheets of transparent canvas).

Mustard Seed Forest in Eksootika – Tallinn Estonia
The works were exhibited in Tallinn art hall in 2012. The weather became warmer, Summer was ahead. The forest received different light in this hall. The late spring sun light run through the forest and lighted up the paths among the trees. The visitors who were in the winter forest could also tell the different experiences.

Heaven Rooted Mustard Seed Forest
This time the forest showed as a different concept. All the trees are heaven rooted in D-52 Gallery in Germany.

Artwalk to Niguliste is an artistic event consisting of a musical and a visual part. Both musical and visual part are an original composition. The visual icons were represented in the calligraphy trace, which were transformed from various symbols of transitional Chinese pagoda and Niguliste church. In this event, the creative artists offered the audience an imaginative sound-visual journey, or ARTWALK, to Niguliste, allowing the audience to experience a new artistic perspective.

As a successful result, this ARTWALK continued later on in China in 2013 – Asian Artwalkart.

Bamboo and Mountain
This wetland impromptu took place in Wuyi Shan of Fujian province, south of China. Here is the story about this work:
Once I was on a train back to Shanghai. I heard radio announcement like this: our approaching station is ¨Wuyi Shan¨. That is how I learnt the real geography location of this place and it also made a difference of my journey.
Wuyi mountain is a magical peaceful place (compare to the crowed international city like Shanghai). It is a tourist highlight in the southern China. Many people also go there for Tea business. The famous red tea is from this place.
“The place has been changed a lot,” a local villager told me: “mountains were flattened into wide main street; affordable inns were upgraded into starred hotels; vegetable fields turned into tea farm in the mountain, more cars are parked on the narrow country road. It´s different already.”
At that moment, this sentence came to my mind:
¨What you do makes a difference, and you have to decided what kind of difference you want to make. __ Jane Goodall¨

What difference I can do for this place?

Door to Perception

While a door closes, another opens.
A person walks through a door as an entrance or an exit?