Interview and edit by: He Jing

30^th June 2018

Ding Yi Studio

He Jing (HJ): perhaps we could start with “seeing” rather than the accomplished visuals. For many years now, although your visuals have undergone much evolution, one part of your work has remained unchanged – the creation of a particular way of “seeing”. Your art is unique in this respect because it requires the viewer to remove any presumed associations or final interpretations and instead be more present in the act of seeing. In the words of Frank Stella: “What you see is what you see.” If that is the case, how do you regard the relationship between an artist’s work and his way of seeing?

Ding Yi (DY): I’ve worked as an artist for thirty years. My continual work has been time-consuming: I have been in my studio daily, working on the canvas closely. What that means is, I think I’ve been totally immersed in my canvas. I think the process is best described as a kind of “enlightenment”. You’re always asking yourself: why exactly am I so involved with my work? The most important thing is that over all these years, regardless of changes of the era, you always stay focused on painting because you’re a painter. The only thing you need to think about is producing a good painting. And you need to fully live your own experiences and express or reveal them. You have to convey how you’re feeling to your viewers through your visuals. How artists manage to ensure that viewers are surprised when they look at the painting and then continue to discover new things and feelings on further viewing is, I think, an important element that a painter should devote to his paintings. There’s the big picture to think about, such as the overall structure, coherence, effect and colour; there’re also the fine details to consider: you’re trying to get the viewer to continually “see” the paintings and constantly draw their gaze towards different points on the canvas. As the viewer’s eye darts around the canvas, this motion is in fact driven by the visual; in other words, the infinite changes are bestowed by the painter.

This is certainly related to my way of art-making: With no obvious centre or focal point, the painting is scattily structured. There is no hefty sense of depth; it feels flat. The energy of the painting is thus dispersed on the overall visual. Traditionally, painters would guide the gaze of the viewer towards a particular focal point in the painting; peripheral details would be overlooked because everywhere outside the focal point was “dimmer”. When you remove these focal points and make the painting “flatter”, everywhere becomes a focal point. Even the “dimmer” areas of the painting are created using similar brushstrokes and they follow the same structure as the other parts. This differentiated my practice from classical painting.

HJ: in the mid-80s, you began from a position of “distrust” in art-making as it has evolved in the context of western modernism and in traditional Chinese aesthetics. Given this double lack of confidence, you are seeking a way of thinking and an artistic style that are entirely individual – in fact, ones are all your own. This includes exploring a way to “make painting not seem like painting”. Would it be fair to say that your journey towards finding your own path began with a negation, rather than a continuation of tradition, one that has a stark sense of inquisitiveness? Following on from that premise, your work would therefore have clear ideological implications – although “ideology” here would be the conceptuality of painting rather than of any social or political agenda.

DY: Hou Hanru once said, “Ding Yi is perhaps the world’s most ideological artist.” I think what he was saying reflected a general state of affairs at the time. In the 1980s the whole nation was looking for ways to innovate; and art was perhaps the most sensitive or the quickest to act in this regard. I was a student at the time, hungry for knowledge about the unknown – for example, we had only a partial, fragmented understanding of Western contemporary art at the time and so it was really interesting for us. Apart from the limited number of artworks available to us, there was a very small number of translations of the history of Western art. One of these, A History of Modern Western Art, covered up to the end of the 1960s. It was very thin, with almost exclusively black and white photographs, but for me reading it in 1982, that book was enough to give me a basic understanding of the Western art discourse. After I finished it, I had the impression that over the past 100 years, the West had everything and had accomplished everything there was to be done. That’s why I wanted to find a new perspective from which I could create something complementary to the Western canon, and which would differ in some way from the established Chinese tradition. While I was a student, I could tell that the Chinese artistic tradition was completely different from that of the West. It contained traditional Chinese elements, but it also had some Soviet elements. It was necessary, therefore, to find a new breakthrough. By this point, I had in fact already begun private study of the School of Paris artists, the Impressionists, and so on, on my landscape drawings and these influences taught me the basic techniques. When you examine mainstream Chinese painting at the time, for example the Shanghai Museum of Art’s continuing large themed exhibitions, you find an extraordinary ignorance of such techniques, and you begin to doubt their credentials. Moving on from that, you begin to want to start something of your own. When I was a student, I learned traditional Chinese painting. At the time many of our teachers were getting on in years. They were well-known in China and they were teaching us under the traditional master-apprentice system. Our teachers would paint, and we would copy them. After class, I would return to my rented apartment and paint experimental abstract work. I have to say, though, that at the time these paintings at home were quite disorganised: it was all rather spontaneous. Sometimes I’d be inspired by something I saw in a catalogue, or in a book. Because I wasn’t admitted to the oil painting faculty, I decided to take up something I didn’t know anything about – which is why I studied at the Faculty of Chinese Painting. However, it was also obvious that I didn’t want to pursue traditional Chinese painting. During my years as a student (1986-1990), I was constantly experimenting with contemporary art.

HJ: When did you become a student of Yu Youhan?

DY: I had just been enlightened by the School of Paris, sometime between 1980 and 1983. At the time, Yu was a teacher at an arts school, but for three years prior to that he had in fact only been teaching us photography. He did not teach us painting. As early as 1982 I was introduced to Yu by a classmate. I brought large rolls of work with me for him to give me some guidance on. I had a very clear idea of where I was going at the time: I wanted to be an artist. That’s why although my university major was actually “decorating”[1], my spare time including the weekends was taken up by painting. I returned to Shanghai (city centre) once every month. The other three weekends I would be painting somewhere else. In those days, Yu Youhan was studying Paul Cezanne and the Impressionists. I would watch him paint lots of pertinent works– and that included experiments with abstract art in 1981-1982. So in terms of our timeline of Western art study, we were very much aligned. At most we had a two or three-year gap between us, but Yu Youhan’s understanding was far more thorough than mine, perhaps on account of his age. By that by the 1980s, I had already dismissed the mainstream direction on contemporary art in China.

HJ: in your earliest work, you avoided all contact with the ideological and socio-political changes around you. In 1998, though, you suddenly came to realise the effect the huge changes that were going on in Shanghai were having on you. That’s when you began your 12-year-long “Fluorescence” series. In more recent years, it seems like you have returned to exploring intrinsic values in painting. It’s as if you’ve come full circle after moving from the internal to the external, and then reverting to the internal. How would you describe the path you have taken? Assuming the changes in society at the end of the 1990s made you aware that artists need to connect with the world around them, has your position on this issue altered at all today? Now that you have established your own system of art – and it’s increasingly mature now – do you see any change between these internal and external relationships?

DY: When an artist creates a work, sometimes it’s deliberate. Sometimes, however, you try to avoid such strategised intention. In fact I had an extremely long term when I had a very calculated purpose – as if I was trying to build something that needed absolutism and self-control. I couldn’t be swayed by any sentiments. The thing I was trying to build became very strict, and notably minimalist – or perhaps absolutely rational. In the early stages, you have to establish your own style. You want to make your painting very intentional in order to remain consistent. However, as you develop your work, you discover that such absolutism could not envelop all of your painting process. You have to have new perspectives and ideas. As you get older, you have new experiences that influence your work in many ways and details. That’s why in my Fluorescence series, I was undoubtedly stimulated by the tremendous social changes going on. My position on urbanisation became woven into my system of abstraction. So this process has indeed led to many changes in my work, particularly in the tones that I use. I’m still changing my paintings today, although the nature of changes might be different.

In recent years, I have been looking for something new. It’s difficult to define. I have a vague idea that I’m looking for a new social spirit, mainly because of the huge transformation that have occurred in society, which offers a more elevated perspective to view the world. In 1998, I’d view things from a Chinese-centric angle, and I could only see my own world. But over the past few years I hope that I’ve put my world, and China, under the international scope. It’s hard to describe because this is the first time I’ve talked about this idea to anyone. It’s complicated. In recent years, the places I’ve travelled the most have all been in the Third World, about which I once knew very little. In the past, we tended to focus on just the developed countries with the mainstream artistic world. These are still important today, but you need to have a broader view as well. My travels showed me many things. The cultures of the countries I visited touched me and gave me a lot of inspiration. Previously I didn’t have many opportunities to engage in such.

Another thing I’ve noticed is the burgeoning power of Chinese manufacturing in the third world. Manufacturing is the mainstay of the Chinese economy, while in comparison, art and culture is still far from that. How do you take up such responsibility, then? When you have increasing ability to steer your own course in terms of economic development, can the same thing happen in culture? Chinese culture is still very weak; there is a lack of cultural self-confidence and truly global values that can engender the birth of a new culture, either. These issues made me ask myself what I was looking for in my painting, and what a truly global language and values might look like. It’s a very complicated issue. For example, the Belt and Road Initiative focuses on manufacturing and development of infrastructure. Economic community is part of the initiative; political economy is its main areas. However, there’ s not much cultural input. But I think culture is especially important today. We need to consider why our culture and philosophy aren’t making inroads elsewhere. Why aren’t they influential abroad? It’s hard for a painter to change the entire situation. All I can do is realise that possibility of change and express it in my work. Perhaps that’s exactly the idea that I’m exploring now in my art-making. I hope my paintings will have a certain explosive energy – although they employ neutral, abstract symbols, they might be able to preserve some kind of cultural ambition for the future.

HJ: Hou Hanru once said that the only place an individualist artist such as yourself could have thrived is Shanghai. One art gallery has also concurred that your paintings could only have happened in this city. Would you agree with that viewpoint?

DY: I am personally very fond of Shanghai. I have lived here my entire life and have never wanted to leave. I like the city possibly because I know the place well and am satisfied with life here. Of course, a lot of my inspiration comes from Shanghai. I personally feel every single change that happens in Shanghai. I don’t know how exactly Hou Hanru’s statement applies to my personally, but it makes good sense when you look at my quotidian work. Shanghai exudes the bustling energy and opulence of a metropolis, but when you enter the studio you can vanish into your own world, forgotten. Shanghai allows me to simultaneously remain independent, and to connect with the whole world.

HJ: In terms of the relationship between an artist’s work and the city in which they live, your work actually calls to mind the close relationship between Shanghai and early craft and design in China. You seem never to have rejected the craft tradition, unlike so many painters and avant-garde artists. You also have some experience as a designer. Would you say that these elements that are closely linked to the metropolis (handicrafts and design) originate more from personal factors, or from the custom of Shanghai and the surrounding environment?

DY: Both the condition in Shanghai and my personal experience are pertinent. In the 1930s, Shanghai was the most prosperous city in Asia. Prosperity at that time was a lifestyle; it was an urban vogue that was in step with Paris, New York and Tokyo. In that context, the pursuit of aesthetics was stylised: the objects they used, the clothes they wore, where they lived, all reflected a certain demand for quality. Why is Shanghai deemed as the most Westernised city in China? Because it was the city most akin to an international metropolis. When you look back at the 1980s, many Chinese cities didn’t live up to the name. They were like villages. In one sense, Shanghai is the epitome of a modern city. Of course, in addition to focusing on humanity and spiritual pursuit, contemporary art does concern with the form – all of which are closely tied in with metropolitan culture. In Shanghai, it’s as if you are given an international mind-set from the moment you’re born. In a lot of cases, this means you don’t consider working in other parts of China. For instance, it doesn’t entice you to exhibit your work in Beijing – instead, you go straight to New York or London. It’s entirely possible that this attitude began with my parents’ generation. I think it’s deeply entrenched.

HJ: One of the clearest features of your work is the sense of rhythm from your repeated brushstrokes. Of course, you’re not just mindlessly repeating exactly the same thing without any change; rather, you generate changes within repetition. What’s really fascinating is how, on the one hand, the way your repeated crosses make the whole painting more egalitarian, as Wang Min-an once said: “One painting resonates with another”; while on the other, your repetitions have actually led to new development. It’s like the static nature of the details of your paintings finally precipitated change in terms of the whole painting. Repetition (a lack of change) led to change. There is a strong sense of a philosophy in just the act of painting. Is it true that such a long-term and unique painting system such as yours has actually become more important than the painting itself?

DY: Sometimes after a day of work, I feel I’m just like a very traditional painter. I’m thinking intensively, but my behaviour is very traditional in that I spend a great proportion of my time immersed in my artwork. What is it that I like about this method of working? It inspires me. Each painting contains some element that I left unfinished in the previous work. To put it another way, when I finish one painting, I start thinking about what to paint next. Even for one unfinished piece, it also exerts an influence on my next work. For example, take Appearance of Crosses 2018-1. When I’d got two thirds of the way through it, it suddenly occurred to me that the painting looked very much like the terrain at Yadan, in Dunhuang, where centuries of sand erosion has moulded the landscape in a particular way. I thought I should paint a similar piece, but larger, with more going on in the picture. The new painting should also breakthrough in the sense of having more raised surfaces. A desire for the work to have an inclined impulsion was hence emerged. When I completed the larger Appearance of Crosses 2018-2, I began to wonder how I might alter the basic foundation of my paintings. That’s why in the next piece, I began to reconfigure my colour scheme. In order to make the colours clearer, I thought some parts of the painting should be less saturated… So that’s how my paintings began to link up and how each began to influence the next.

HJ: So your paintings have been born of this derivation process?

DY: Yes. It’s all about the changes and progress. The evolution of my work could be in terms of my materials, the palette, and techniques. What doesn’t change is the connection between one piece and the next, and the unanswered questions from the previous painting to the new one. It really is quite a deductive process – and it’s been happening for three decades.

HJ: You have stated that you hope “painting can return to its true form – as form alone. Form is the very essence of the spirit.” I think that in the crosses, which form the basic component of almost all of your work, we can see that you have been faithful to the principle you outlined. From the very outset, you stripped your crosses of every meaning, reducing them to a mere shape, a pure form that was used to construct the overall image. Your entire method of artwork was built on the multiplication, transformation and derivation of these shapes. In this respect, your paintings have been about “minimalism” right from the beginning. At the same time, they correspond to the “minimalist” seeing experience of the viewers (as we have previously discussed). One might say that regardless of how complicated your paintings are in terms of the palette or the plethora of shapes, at their core they are in fact minimalist works.

DY: On the surface, my early work does indeed appear more minimalist than my more recent work. I had a very clear outline of where I was going: minimal and flat. I opted for this approach because minimalism is more or less about the simplification of shapes, the absolute flatness of canvas and the lowest level of colours. I still count myself as a minimalist artist, but my minimalism is different to that of 1960s or 1970s artists like Piet Mondrian, Kazimir Malevich, or later on, Frank Stella.

Malevich, for instance, was creating truly minimalist works a hundred years ago. He had already closed the door to any imaginable innovation right then. Black on black, white on white – there was totally nothing left to explore. But for my minimalism, it’s about making painterly adjustment in the most restricted conditions. I’ve used fluorescent colours for 12 years. There are only 4 or 5 colours in the whole fluorescent palette, and that’s what I’ve been working with for the whole 12 years. For the past 13 years, I’ve used only 2 symbols: either the cross (十) or the star (米). My work over this period, you could say, is a form of minimalism.

HJ: You’ve always emphasised the importance of being accurate because it represents the product of the rationality of painting. In your early work, you used rulers and ruling pens as a means to seek the ideal of precision. In recent years, you have expressed the desire for accuracy in your paintings in a way of derivative imagery formation, or a type of non-verbal formulaic conglomeration (composed of “十” and “X”). On that level, I have always seen a distance between your work and “abstract painting” in the traditional sense, as the latter centred on form and colour to resist portrayal and narrative. In recent years, your work has not only looked at form and colour, but also employs more contemporarily conjured imagery.

DY: I have constantly been thinking about the issue of iconology in contemporary art, particularly Chinese contemporary art. The main issue is that we need a “new” type of imagery. The same issue applies in abstract art. If we analyse more than three decades of contemporary artwork in China, we find that we’ve developed a problem in our iconology. The implication of our iconology is short-lived because it’s just the expression of minor sentiment existing in society, or a reaction to a particular stage of development, so the icons it produces lack permanent value. In abstract art, because abstract images are not really directly corresponding to reality, there is more freedom. In some ways, the threshold to abstract art is the lowest, but at the same time, it is also the most difficult art. From the very beginning we witnessed two forms of abstract energy: the rational, and the emotional. The emotional phenomena involved expressing oneself; anyone has a reason to express themselves and the power to do so. You can complete a work of expression fluidly, but it is difficult to keep the creative juices flowing. Is it possible to control one’s creativity? Can an artist actually ensure that their artistic vitality flow continuously into the painting? That’s not a tap you can just turn on or off. That’s why, at a lot of group exhibitions of abstract art in China, there are often pieces of art that are exhibited on the fringes of the event that, in terms of iconology, feature old and outdated images. They aren’t challenging in any way compared to what has gone before. Some people have raised the notion of “New York” abstract or “Asian” abstract, which adds a regional dimension to abstract art. This often happens in abstract painting. What I really care about the most, though, is whether there is an image that is new, relevant to our contemporary age, and which can epitomise my unique individual mode of expression.

HJ: If we turn to the issue of crafts, I think it’s fair to that your work does have some contradictory elements. Firstly, you have created paintings that combine aspects of the cognitive and physicality of imagery to explore linguistic semiotics. Secondly, you have developed a method of execution that follows the crafts tradition and which is all about tireless, purely technical skill. These two aspects of your work seem to have little synergy. How did they both come to be in your paintings and complement one another?

DY: I am actually deeply obsessed with these contradictions. When I’m evaluating a painting, my first rule of thumb is “integrity”. A painting must have integrity; there must be no cunning little tricks by the artist. Don’t fiddle with the painting, don’t fabricate it or try to hide something bad inside it. A painting should be full of positive, upright energy. The principle of integrity applies to the artistic process, too: not hurrying to finish the piece is just as important. Second, under the principle of “integrity”, I have always tried to make my paintings “dissent”. A painting should not be too smooth, fluent – too beautiful or aesthetic – I’m against all that. A good painting should be difficult to view, with dissensus inside. Elements of difficulty in a painting complement its overall upright, positive feel, and give it some quirkiness. When you mix design with painting to create this slight dissonance, the finished work feels like neither painting nor design piece; it’s somewhere in between the two.

A painting should not be too overt in its intent. There needs be a middle ground which could be ambiguous. Sometimes, it is hard for an artist to use language to elucidate the idea, but the imagery they use is accessible to the viewer. The viewer may in fact have an uncertain feeling to the painting. It’s not as clear-cut as a mathematical formula; there’s no absolutely correct answer.

HJ: Does that mean you believe that craft, or technical elements, actually help you balance out your ‘positive integrity’ and your “dissensus”?

DY: Yes. For all these years, though, my style has been made up of a few elements. Firstly, there’s the grid in which I’ve prefaced every painting. Secondly, everything is expressed using lines. Thirdly, there’s the “十” or the “米” symbols. These three elements, taken together, comprise my individual style and set me apart from other artists. Everything else in my art has come from my personal development, but these three elements are my art’s basic building blocks. My grid, lines, and symbols have all been carefully designed by me. They have been with me the whole way, for the entire thirty years since the very beginning.

HJ: As a painter, how exactly do you view the relationship between the body and your work? It seems clear that in your system, the body does not have the strong presence one sees in abstract expressionist painting, but at the same time, the body has an irreplaceable role in your work given the rational nature of your concepts and techniques. In fact, compared to expressionist painting and some ardent painters, the role of “the body” in your work seems far more complex given your years of repeated, similar body movements (as you work).

DY: You’re right that the body has a more complex, and actually a more intrinsic role to play in my work. The actions of an abstract expressionist artist are what’s on the surface; they can be performed. The movement during the painting process are far more rhythmic. However, for artwork such as mine, it’s more about a kind of body movements which is continuous and enduring. The reason that abstract expressionism is a type of action painting is that it requires large movement’s scope. The principle behind bodily movement during the painting process is the same regardless of the style, though: I tend to move my arm or wrist (instead of my waist as to abstract expressionists) more than other parts of the body. I don’t think art should be judged on its so-called ‘scope of motion’; it’s not as if you can produce more powerful art by moving your body more violently. That’s not how it works – rather, it’s a subtle relationship between the “microscopic” and the “micro-microscopic”. Traces of an artist’s movements are all on their paintings, just mine are subtler. Perhaps works of art focusing on these minute details leave a longer-lasting endurability in the end, because once you sit down to paint, you can be there painting for ten hours. Within the same period of time, someone like Jackson Pollock might have produced three paintings.

Over the last few years, I’ve really been in the zone. I’ve had a very strong desire to create, so strong in fact that I can’t stop myself. I can truly become immersed in my work. I experienced a similar period early on in my career, around 1991, and I think the spark has come back to me. You can really devote yourself into it with the complete span of time. In 1991, I would normally begin work in the afternoon and not stop until around 8 in the evening. Then I’d get on my bicycle and go see a movie. Then I’d come back at around 10 in the evening and continue painting, right up until 4 in the morning. In those days, the lines between work and life didn’t exist. Everything in my life was about my art. That’s really the best state. Right now, I feel very much like I did then. All of my time is taken up by one thing: painting new works. When I get tired, I take a half-hour break, but otherwise, all of my mentality, ideas, and time goes into my work. That’s why I think I’m in a really good place right now.

HJ: In your art-making, would you still encounter any difficulties? We know that in your many years of practice,, you’ve experimented with a lot of different materials and techniques. You’ve pushed the envelope and expanded the definitions of the genre. In the last few years, however, you don’t seem to have made so many changes in terms of the overall image or in technique. Instead, you’ve focused on how to deal with the structure of each work (rather than simply becoming “more and more abstract”).

DY: Yes, of course, there have been difficulties that I’ve constantly had to face. Firstly, within the creative process, you have ebb and flow; you have peaks. In recent years, the peaks haven’t been so obvious. I’ve been trying to use some external factors to inspire myself – such as exhibitions (one major exhibition a year) – because these call on all of my energy, passion and work attitude.

In every exhibition I have new work on display, and there are always changes compared to the previous year. But more than just changes in the visuals themselves, I need to have deeper changes in the way I think, and in my vision. One thing I’ve always felt is that in the midst of this challenging environment into which I put myself, there is no hurdle that cannot be overcome. There is always a relationship between the image on the canvas and the spirituality you’re seeking. Sometimes, the more complex you make the image, the more you detract from the spirituality your pursuit. I keep thinking about Malevich’s white-on-white work. When I compare my work with his, I can’t help but feel my own is full of waffle. It’s really difficult to attain that kind of absolute spirit, as he did. My reaction to that is to ask: where’s the new spirituality? How do you express it? What method should you use? The answer of course, is to use your own method – not Malevich’s – and use it to extract something more powerful for your painting.

HJ: As you began your career with “form” and gradually worked towards the essence of painting itself, would it be correct to say that your work has picked up the baton dropped by early Chinese modernist art from the first half of the 20^th century? It was early modernist artists like Lin Fengmian, Zhang Guangyu, Wu Dayu, and Pang Xunqin who initiated the modernist style in China, before it was interrupted by the war in the 1930s. After 1949, the spirit of modernism was further obscured by the political mainstream of the time. Do you think that your identity as a Shanghainese “Haipai” artist is even more relevant, given this context? What we’re actually examining here is the continuing development of modernism within a cultural bloc centred around Shanghai.

DY: When I was at craft school in the 1980s, I studied Western modernism. It’s interesting to note that at that time, works by the cohort of old artists who had returned to China in the 1930s were being brought out and featured in exhibitions. The artwork on display was by artists like Liu Haili, Guan Liang, and Wu Dayu. I’ve actually always been interested in early modernism. For example, I paint scenery using Maurice Utrillo’s technique, and I often add in some Guan Liang-esque elements like when I paint pine trees. I really like how Guan Liang dealt with pines, or bamboo fences next to Western-style houses, in his work. I learnt from Guan by studying his work. But at the same time, I wasn’t just interested in these artists, I reflected on them. For example, I’ve never thought of Wu Dayu simply as an abstract painter – he seems more like an imagist to me, and that’s how I would view the artists of his era. When I saw Zao Wou-ki’s work for the first time at the then Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts in 1983, I was really excited because I saw Zao Wou-ki as the first ethnic Chinese to have made such a tremendous breakthrough in abstract art. I employed his techniques in a few paintings to learn from him. At earlier times I have consistently mentioned Zao in the media, but today when I see his work I don’t like it at all. The biggest problem with his work is it’s too sweet, too saturated, too pretty. I like his work from the 1960s, or from 1971-1972 – but nothing after that.

These artists were the first to bring in Western art to China and to localise it. My study on them and Utrillo happened at the same time and their work had a strong formative influence on me. I didn’t complete my study of oil painting; in my second year I applied to join the traditional Chinese painting faculty. At that point I had already come to the conclusion that my future path lay in some combination of Chinese and Western art. Going to study traditional Chinese painting would give me a grounding in an area of which I knew little. However, once I graduated, I no longer had illusions about fusing East and West because I believed to do so would only be a phrasal contribution. Even had I managed to do so, I would not have revolutionised the state of art in China. It was too great a challenge for me; I couldn’t find a breakthrough point. If you look at Japan, you’ll find the same issue – there was no breakthrough there, either. I do hope though that when change comes, it happens on an equal position and platform with the West. Japan, on the other hand, is still defining itself within the Western value system; you see this in Japanese manga or erotic culture, where what is produced is rather exotic in a way that mirrors the exoticism of the 1930s. When we say “fusing” of East and West, what we actually mean is exoticism. For the West, that exoticism comes from the East, but the language used comes from the West.

Today, everything has been turned on its head. People’s understanding, perspective and vision are all different. Nevertheless, I hope that at some point, the Chinese spirit will be able to find its voice. As for exactly what language it will use, perhaps its will adopt some enhanced language, or it will be a further search. I’m not sure. Perhaps there will be some huge change in the future. This is an issue that means a great deal to me. It’s truly difficult to resolve. If you dig into the issue, you have to talk about the wider picture and things like the state of the economy, China’s place on the world stage, or the extent to which art has prospered. Why was such a transformation not possible in Japan? I think the key reason is that they didn’t build their own platform for it: they spent all their money on importing Western works of Impressionist art. That meant they were unable to construct a localised context and thus nurture an environment for art to grow. For China, is this possible? For now, I only feel a slight sense of such trend.

[1] A term coined by the Chinese art schools in the 80s for the discipline of visual communication and graphic design

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