CLOUD IS MOUNTAIN
31 MARCH TO 30 APRIL 2006
East & West Art, Melbourne, Australia
The essential factor in sensing art is receiving the messages for the artist. One can gather detailed information, develop technical competence and analyze as long as the spectator receives the artist message.
Our understanding of Chinese painting is the capturing of the essence of the objects and not their outward visible form which is important; it is the successful transmission of the feeling, the inner spirit or movement and not the precise depiction of the objects by which the art is measured.Michael Sullivan in his book The Meeting of Eastern and Western Art states, “Western realism, because it demands an analytic approach to the subject, gets in the way both of free calligraphic expression and the intuitive generalization from experience that give Chinese painting its timeless, universal quality…”
There has been steady progress from both Eastern and Western artists this century toward the creation of a global artistic approach; one which is rooted in the respective cultures but which has its foundation the communication of higher ideals through art. An awareness which seemed to emerge most significantly in Abstract Expressionism, where the physical and philosophical methodology merged as one. The example being Jackson Pollock and his “Action Painting” and what he said about his method, “….the painting has a life of its own. I try to let it come though. It is only when I lose contact with the painting that the result is a mess” and seventeenth century master, Shitao, who in his essay on painting, “Hua yu lu”, talked of the artist’s exhilaration carrying him through the painting on an unbroken surge of power.
Is this, the enlightenment of Zen? The inner spirit of traditional Chinese painting, Qi ?Zen can be analyzed, it can be described, it can be sensed but it is a vague image with no substance until it is experienced. How do we know that it really exists? Aside from the testimony of many who seem to know, there are the paintings of the Zen masters.
Contemporary Chinese painting has absorbed many stylistic and technical developments from Western art over the last century in areas relevant to their style but have never lost touch with the essentially inner spirit of great art form which their tradition springs. Drawing from Matisse …. An artist is born with the sensibility of that period, and it counts for more than any learning can give them. The artist communicates the age and anyone who cultivates their sensors can communicate with this inner spirit. You are invited to make the transition from spectator to perceiver.Jiwye To lives in this the 21st century, this generation of Eastern and Western thought.Jiwye’s new series Cloud is Mountain incorporates his study and teaching in Buddhist art with his life in modern Hong Kong. A contrast which he defines by mountains, fixed to the earth and solid, with clouds, spirits, pure and refined. Yet he complicates this by the imagery of the fragility of both, in that the mountain can always be moved by man, whereas the cloud cannot. Though the cloud may dissipate it can always return in a different form.
Jiwye’s paintings can always be analysed but the spectator will always perceive his work in their own individual way.
MARJORIE HO, Gallery Director
道之外,任心自在,形與象,意與畫,手與心,兩皆相忘。形與象合而為一,意不在畫而有畫在,不滯於手,不礙於心,不知然而然而得其所然。一切眾生,莫不是道,道之外,萬物歸乎為一,以一觀眾,以物觀物,道是我,我是道,盡性而知天,盡物而顯道。道外空寂,思量自化,內外明徹,靜觀自在,一切無礙,諸念皆空,挾宏思以遨遊。「雲山無痕」(Cloud is Mountain)是一系列越界多元文化領域的作品,是杜之外游東走西,穿中梭外,邃古來今的一渡驛站。這一驛在這,下一驛在哪?藝術家的一生就是在建構問題與解構問題的相互交替中不斷追尋,在不斷的追尋中,藝術家便開闢了藝術新徑,成熟了個人的藝術表現。這一驛是雲山兩相忘,橫看成嶺側成峰。下一驛是‥‥‥是道之外?是見雲是雲,見山是山?是致虛極?守靜篤?是破執?人生驛旅,三數十年,雨過天清,一輪明月。當下之外,就是至極無垠的驛旅。