This text is written in a manner similar to Ding Yi’s approach to his paintings: initially planned but eventually expanding from a small and unique sign (or a small but not so unique idea in my case). It forms an organized pattern that may risk becoming out of control. The end result can either be a victory over the rival or a failure. As Ding Yi says in a recent interview, it unfolds like a game of Go.1 In other words, my writing unfolds randomly, similar to chess pieces under the hand of an amateur Go player who hasn’t mastered the game. They may try to plan the game in the beginning, but are constantly interrupted and redirected by incidental events.

I first encountered Ding Yi and his paintings thirty- five years ago at the 1989 China Avant- Garde exhibition. It was a memorable moment when both China and the world stood on the brink of a drastic change. In such a turbulent time, Ding Yi and his art appeared incredibly rational and elegant, far removed from the surrounding commotion. It was cool! However, it wasn’t until 2005, upon Ding Yi’s personal invitation, that I had the chance to write my first text on his art.2 Shanghai was booming at the time, with everyone excited and optimistic about the city and the country’s prosperous future. China was seen as an emerging player that would transform the world. Amid the waves of excitement, Ding Yi remained serene. He shared in the collective enthusiasm but stayed “realistic” and cautious. He didn’t superficially embrace “change” like others did. Instead, he stuck to his own tried and true system since the late 1980s, avoiding the collective obsession with “innovation.” Now, in 2024, one year after the street event that claimed to end the lockdown, what kind of Shanghai does Ding Yi reside in? How does he navigate it? It seems that Ding Yi’s palette has become diverse and colorful. He has introduced direct references to reality in the form of everyday occurrences and even incorporated motifs suggesting human crowds, indicating a possible new direction in his work. This is evident in Appearance of Crosses 2023-2 (2023). Abstract paintings now enjoy commercial and media success in his city and country, with collectors loving them and displaying them in their bedrooms. On the other hand, those seeking to censor have found little to criticize. Ding Yi is free to showcase his work without restraint. However, upon closer inspection, one may understand that Ding Yi’s “return to the real” implies a certain awareness of reawakening the long- dormant ghost of the avant- garde. The act of creating abstract paintings is not mere frivolity with geometric patterns but rather serves the purpose of creating schemes that can evoke trivial images from real life and restructure them into “regulable” and hence universal signs. This leads to a deeper understanding of our perceptions and emotions toward the “real world.” Art is well suited to invent such signs, or “abstract forms,” so that we can all embrace and participate in the new culture and humanity of our creations through various revolutionary fantasies and actions: socially, economically, technologically, and spiritually.

The years between the 1980s and 1990s are highly significant. During that time, an “industrializing imagination” began to prevail in the Chinese avant-garde scene. The purpose of this imagination was twofold: it liberated the trauma from the Cultural Revolution while diverting attention toward building a “constructive” new world within reason. In a way, this can be compared to a generation of Russian- Soviet avant-gardes, such as Kazimir Malevich and El Lissitzky, followed by the Bauhaus. They also sought to create an unprecedented vision of an entirely new society. Indeed, new images were reinvented for human beings and their environments, often relying on geometric elements and symbols as new languages or systems of signs.3 In China at the turn of the 1990s, more and more artists looked toward creating similar signs of a new order, one that represented a “veritably modernized world.” This was seen as the most effective way to move beyond the constraints of communist totalitarianism and its radical beliefs in “progress.” A tendency to “dissolve humanistic passion” emerged as a common motivation for many artists across the country. Artists like Wang Guangyi (who added grids to cliched political icons like Mao Zedong), Yu Youhan, and his follower Ding Yi experimented with abstract paintings in Shanghai. The “New Measurement Group” and Wang Jianwei explored radical conceptualism in Beijing. They, among others, were representatives of this trend. Inspired by international conceptual art and embracing the abstract, rational, and “systematic and measurable,” they sought to envision a new order in the upcoming age of post- industrial society, driven by digitization and universalism. Eventually, they were tempted to define their efforts as the new avant- garde, leading China into the global family. Like the early European avant- garde, they worked hard to realize, as T.J. Clark suggested while quoting Norbert Elias, an “internalization of social instruction.” This eventually pointed to a “civilizing process.”4 Truly, this was a revolutionary request for its time—provocative, yet breathtakingly beautiful. The world post-1989 was supposed to be a new epoch. According to Francis Fukuyama, it was supposed to be the “End of History.” However, the “international art world” remained ideologically justified and rushed to “discover” and “consume” Chinese artists who continued to play with signs of non- official propaganda. This phenomenon was aided by the introduction of commercial propaganda, repackaging Cold War legends of rebellion into an emerging, fashionable trend for the flourishing market of “contemporary art.” These favored “products” were then labeled as “Political Pop” and “Cynical Realism.” The conceptually centered efforts of those who sought to propose visions of a truly contemporary “world order”—in other words, those who looked for a reliably constructive, all- encompassing critical way to forge genuine global art—had to compete for their own sustainability. Their achievements prove to be solely relevant; they are “dissidents of dissidence.” I coined the term “un- unofficial art” to highlight their choice to develop in a “third space,” which evolved into a laboratory of cultural hybridization and individual freedom—a new foundation for reconstructing global society based on openness, diversity, and change.5 While engaging in collective efforts, Ding Yi insisted on the singularity of his painterly language. His simple signs of the “Appearance of Crosses” (十示) took on broader and wilder meanings. Consequently, his paintings gained global significance, representing

his intent to embrace universality. His passion for the works of Piet Mondrian and Frank Stella,6 combined with his regular exploration of Chinese painting traditions, initiated this endeavor. Ding Yi dedicated himself to creating a myth in contemporary painting that is simultaneously “global” and “Chinese.” Many artists of his generation shared this ambition, revealing the profound paradox of being an artist in China or of Chinese origin, struggling for existence in a globalizing world. Ultimately, they still needed to anchor themselves in a certain “Chinese- ness” as their safe haven, engaging in the common project of nation- state building in the age of globalization. Ding Yi, now celebrated as a master of “Chinese contemporary art,” emerges from this conundrum as an epochal hero. However, the origins of his legend remain rather humble. Therefore, I recall what I wrote in 2005:

Ding Yi’s paintings are indeed excessively repetitive and systematic. They are systematic compositions and variations of the same motifs: 十 and 示. All his works are “simply” multiplications and proliferations of these two very simple brush- stroked motifs. 十 and 示 are actually the simplest signs, or the most basic elements, in color printing technology. Certainly, this is a personal choice, probably almost obsessively derived from his own experience of a printing factory worker in his youth. Ding Yi appropriates these “primitive,” basic, and first- degree elements and transforms them into the essential structural motifs of his paintings, pushing them toward maximum diversification. Thus, cleared of any symbolic or narrative meanings, they are turned into the very unique “content” of his paintings. Ding Yi’s engagement with these simplest marks is so determined that it becomes totally obsessive while the “content” of the paintings is simply a rejection of “content” itself. In other words, the process of painting for him is no longer a search for any narrative or emotional expression. Instead, painting is reduced to its minimal state. There is a formidable dynamic created by the tension between the excessiveness of formal variety and the minimalism of the structural elements. In a way, one can qualify Ding Yi’s painting with a paradoxical term: excessive minimalism.7

Perhaps this still holds true. Over time, Ding Yi has managed to “complicate” this simplicity by extending his reach beyond painting. He has completed projects that include sculptures in public spaces, design, and even architecture, multiplying his signs of 十示 and applying them to any available surface to become “artwork.” Ding Yi has become a paradigm of total art. This total art, both personal and universal, is rooted in the cosmopolitan culture that Shanghai, a post- colonial city, embodies. Ding Yi has a particular fondness for Art Deco, which is a foundational element of “Shanghai aesthetics.” He is an avid collector of Art Deco furniture and even designs his own pieces inspired by his collection. Ding Yi’s work goes beyond traditional painting and includes installations and architecture, actively contributing to the rapid urbanization of Shanghai. His work echoes the process of creating a new perception of the urban world, similar to Mondrian’s Broadway Boogie Woogie, which was inspired by the jazz played in New York’s nightclubs, as well as the urban grids of the city. On the other hand, Ding Yi’s paintings can be connected to the “minimalist music” of the contemporary era, specifically “repetitive” music that embraces a post- industrial, cybernetic- digital civilization. The sounds and noises of “atomization” and mechanical reproduction become the new norm in his aesthetic expression. However, Ding Yi’s personal touch has not disappeared from his works. He has reinvented it through non- figurative approaches and sign- inventions. By using fluorescent pigments, Ding Yi captures the excitement of the rapidly rising high- rise buildings in his hometown. The flashing neon lights quickly overtake the starry night sky, erasing the boundaries of the cityscape. His painting Appearance of Crosses 2003-9 resonates vividly with Philip Glass’s composition String Quartet No.1 as Ding Yi drives his taxi through the streets of Gotham City.

In the early twenty- first century, Ding Yi’s work stands out as a unique painterly model that combines strong musicality with urbanity. It is interesting to note the influence of La Monte Young and Terry Ridley, both pupils of Indian chant master Pandit Pran Nath, who brought Hindi music influence into America. Similarly, Ding Yi regularly travels and draws inspiration from Chinese and Tibetan traditions, both artistic and spiritual, in his lifelong search for innovation. These efforts to navigate between ancient and contemporary elements go beyond artistic convention and lead to the creation of innovative forms that transcend boundaries between art and life, reality and unreality, and “this world” and “that world.” Like minimalist musicians who emphasize repetition as a principle of composition, Ding Yi’s use of the unique signs of 十 and 示 structures the meanings of his paintings, freeing him from the constraints of popular canon and allowing him to express what his genuinely free mind wants to convey.

Ding Yi’s experiments have never been limited to the canvas. Instead, he has expanded to larger and more diverse mediums in order to engage with different spatial conditions, from interior to exterior spaces, and galleries to public places. In 2015, Ding Yi was invited to exhibit his work at the Long Museum in Shanghai (see p. 217), a large and challenging space for painters of his inclination. To showcase the strength of his work in such an immense and empty structure, he had to employ completely different mediums and techniques. He decided to move beyond the traditional approach of painting on canvas and instead turned to large wooden panel engraving. These woodcuts have profoundly transformed his methods, resulting in work that is more “performative” and visually complex. It can now be displayed in various settings, from fancy white cube museums and corporate buildings to private residences and temples. The formats and “patterns” of his “painting” are firmly rooted in the system of “Appearance of Crosses” (十示), which have evolved into a total artwork (Gesamtkunstwerk). Additionally, his exhibitions are site- specific, taking into account both the physical space and the cultural background of the venue.

For example, in Qingdao (TAG Museum, 2022), he created and installed new paintings that integrated with the exhibition hall’s openings, providing new window views of the seascape. In Lhasa, he crafted new works that depicted his observations and appreciation of the unique Tibetan landscape, as well as his spiritual dialogue with the local religion and culture. These works were installed in new structures that harmonized perfectly with the art centers (Jebum-Gang Art Center and Shide Space, 2022), which were part of Buddhist temples. These interactions with specific contexts breathe new life into both his art and the sites, temporarily transforming them into occupied zones that “abstract” the artist and the public from mundane everyday experiences. The public’s attention is directed toward things they may usually overlook, such as astrological constellations. In a way, these works reveal Ding Yi’s ambition to create forms that exude monumentality, infinity, and eternity. However, he has not abandoned his love for agility and fragility. While his works may appear carefully planned, they are mostly improvised, incorporating highly unstable and non- solid materials like pastel, chalk, woodchips, raw rice papers, and papyrus. They evolve organically, much like a game of Go. The monumentality that Ding Yi strives for is built on soft and shaky ground, ready to shatter and turn to ashes. It is this sense of fatality that gives his work a true “spirituality.”

Indeed, Ding Yi’s reflection and practice are entering a new stage. He is now incorporating motifs that are closer to figurative references, representing natural elements such as the ocean, sky, stars, and even urban lights. These direct indications of spirituality are forming through an evolutionary and self-organized process. Ding Yi often begins creating from a small detail, without a predefined plan. The result is a constellation that seems to infinitely expand, suggesting a state of ecstasy and transcendence. Perhaps, this connection can align Ding Yi’s art with the legacy of “spiritual abstraction,” as seen in Australian Aboriginal “dreaming” paintings, alongside artists like Yves Klein, Kandinsky, Malevich, and Hilma af Klint. More directly, one can associate it with Tibetan Mandala sand paintings. In these rituals, groups of monks spend days meticulously constructing the sacred realm of the highest deities using colored sands. After moments of prayer and trance, the entire mandala is then erased. This long performance ritual, from meditation to action, creation to destruction, and fullness to emptiness, enacts the most intense and spectacular drama of the world’s destiny. Is ephemera the highest level of sublimation that painting can attain? As Ding Yi’s paintings approach the realm of the sublime, will they also end up being destroyed and erased?

Ding Yi began his avant- garde career as a performance artist in 1986 (see p. 204). Alongside Qin Yifeng and Zhang Guoliang, he wrapped himself in yellow clothes and wandered through the streets of Shanghai, claiming to be public sculptures. This iconic symbol of Shanghai’s performance art remains at the heart of Ding Yi’s artistic approach. For the past three decades, he has focused his energy on the meticulous process of painting in his studio. His studios have become dynamic workspaces for experimental action, and visiting them is a truly transcendent experience. Like his previous studios, Ding Yi’s current studio in West Bund, Shanghai, is incredibly tidy. It is a unique personal universe filled with materials, tools, and models, surrounded by numerous canvases (complete and incomplete), paper works, and frames. These works are created for “other spaces,” destined to be shown and collected by other people. While they wait to reach their destinations, they gather here, telling a different yet elaborate story of the artist’s life and aspirations. Sometimes, it feels painful—almost impossible—to let them leave the room. The transition from concept to departure, from presence to absence, is cherished by Ding Yi and all artists. After exploring other places, the journey always brings him back “home,” where he puts the variety of memories and ideas generated on these trips in order. New “worlds” are imagined and shaped from there. Ding Yi even keeps woodchips of different colors, chipped from woodcut boards, preserved in glass bottles like tubed fetuses in medical labs. One day, real creatures will be born from these tubes! This studio, with the artist breathing, smoking, and moving up and down, functions like a real body. It is an organ that attracts all kinds of fantasy and desire, a delirious source of energy for engaging in “intercourse” with the real world. It embodies a permanent performance—slow yet sexy!

Today, Ding Yi’s work is a true success in the international marketplace. Does this suggest an “un- uncommercial art” following the “un- unofficial art” of the 1990s? In fact, the commercialization of art has always been a necessary condition for a total artwork. The Bauhaus, along with Constructivism, dreamed of demolishing the boundaries between art and design, nonfunctional and applied creations, public and private spaces, and the art and economic worlds. Ding Yi’s paintings now decorate entrance halls of corporate buildings and hotel lobbies (see p. 209), while his furniture designs are being produced and distributed by commercial companies, such as Shang Xia. This brings to mind Cecil Beaton’s photographs for Vogue in March 1951, featuring models in front of Jackson Pollock’s paintings. It is about the public life of the painting, as T.J. Clark pointed out. He explains, “The Vogue photo raises the question of the possible uses of Pollock’s work; what viewers and readers it expected, what spaces it was meant to inhabit; and above all, the question of how such a structure of expectation can be seen, by us in retrospect, to enter and inform the work itself—determining its idiom” and eventually, the question of “sign- systems and their opening onto the social world.”8 I would like to interject here that this question, which emerged in post war America and the West during the first golden age of consumerism, has gained new relevance in China. This is particularly true in early twenty-first-century Shanghai, where consumerism has become even more pervasive, significantly impacting and transforming all aspects of life, including art production. Ding Yi belongs to a generation that began with radical avantgarde aspirations, seeking to ideologically, culturally, and even politically transform society by envisioning a new order. However, the actual outcome of this order turned out to be quite different from their expectations. Indeed, the world has not become more democratic and receptive to idealistic values. On the contrary, it has become much more “pragmatic,” characterized by material wealth but with less room for imagination and fantasy. Freedom has been reshaped as a “cute monster” that manipulates our actions and liberates our physical selves while constricting our minds, especially in the realms of imagination and risk- taking. Ding Yi acknowledges:

The commercialization of art is irreversible. Time has offered it a certain medication—no matter poisonous or salubrious. There are good reasons for commerce to come up to the stage front. It’s due to the changes to the production chain in the arts. For example, in the West, at the beginning, art museums dominated exhibition- making and directed the development of the arts. When the support by the governments for the arts became weaker, and the process turned chaotic, commerce came in to fill the gaps. In 1993, I went to Venice for the Biennale. There was hardly any advertisement in the city. But now, the whole Piazza San Marco is covered by advertisements of all kinds of brands. Art, departing from the ownership of the emperors, the popes, aristocracies, the bourgeoisie, and governments, has now become a public sphere in which all people participate through commercial exchanges. The boundary between art and commerce is blurred. The cartoon, fashion, and “card punching” of today are the results of the changes in the art circle. And the criteria for art has also changed.9

In this context, intelligent artists must adapt quickly to the reality of commercialization and even leverage it to their advantage. The commercialization of art has become the prevailing atmosphere. It weaves an all- encompassing network, like a new sky above us. No one can escape its influence. Smart artists must learn to navigate the conditions offered by the market, the media, and social life, always with a sense of humor, irony, and self- awareness. A new, yet somewhat familiar, world is unfolding before us. And paintings are gaining a new “public life,” don’t you think?

April 11, 2024, Rome

Alexandra Munroe, “In Conversation with Ding Yi,” in Ding Yi, Flowing Infinity (Qingdao: TAG Art Museum, 2022), 217–
Hou Hanru, “An Excessive Minimalist,” in Ding Yi: The Appearance of Crosses (Birmingham: Ikon Gallery, 2005).
J. Clark, Farewell to An Idea, Episodes from a History of Modernism (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1999), 296.
Norbert Elias, quoted in Clark, Farewell to An Idea, 296.
Hou Hanru, “Towards an ‘Ununofficial Art’: De- ideologicalisation of China’s Contemporary Art in the 1990s,” Third Text 34 (Spring 1996), republished in Hou Hanru, On the Mid- Ground (Hong Kong: Timezone 8, 2002).
“Untitled,” Ding Yi Art Studio, https://dingyiartstudio.com/en/works/painting?id=100.
Clark, Farewell to An Idea, 303–
艺术的商业化是不可逆的，时代一直为此提供着某种药物——且不管是毒药还是良药。商业走到前台不是无缘无故的，是因为艺术的产业链发生了变化。比如说西方，最早可能是美术馆来主宰展览和推进艺术的发展，当来自政府的艺术赞助越来越薄弱，环节越来越凌乱，商业就会来填充。我在1993年去威尼斯双年展时，是没有任何广告的，但是今天的圣马可广场都是品牌的广告，艺术由原来皇帝、教皇、贵族、有产阶级和政府的专属，经由商业转变成全民参与的领域，界限越来越模糊。今天所谓的卡通、流行、打卡，也是这个时代艺术圈层变化的结果，艺术过往的判断也都改变了. In《丁乙：越是怀疑，越是茫然，越要努力工作》 , 打边炉ARTDBL, April 4, 2024, https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/SYbD3AENTkt3Atyv2RKETQ.