Reality and the Unreal

by Zhong Shan
November 2012

In 2010, I traveled to Tibet at a friend’s invitation. On this trip, we went to the sacred mountain of Kangrinboqe, and planned to complete a “Zhuan Shan” (a traditional Tibetan religious rite which requires walking, sometimes in a prostrate position, around a sacred mountain). Before starting our “Zhuan Shan,” we were informed that the whole journey covered fifty-seven kilometers, starting at an elevation of 4,500 meters above sea level and rising to a height of about 5,700 meters along the way. This was an extremely demanding trek, and we planned to face it as a life challenge, as something significant beyond daily life, with the “Zhuan Shan” the answer to a problem with a certain outcome. In this way we set off, taking forty hours to complete the journey. In reaching the destination, I suddenly realized that the answer I expected in this result did not matter anymore. Rather, what was important was that I enjoyed the forty-hour journey. In this same way, I am also experiencing and relishing the journey of my art creation.

Oil Painting • Silk • Light

I have long had a strong interest in the traditional Chinese painting material of silk due to its thin and tensile qualities: light but bearing a heavy history. It is translucent and dreamy yet can effectively convey realist or imaginary artistic concepts. I have never stopped studying the applications for silk over the twenty years that I have simultaneously created oil paintings on canvas.

I made my first attempt at painting on silk around 1997. Due to the thinness and transparency of silk, I wondered if it was feasible to illuminate the paintings by providing a light source. After several experiments, I found that when the light source was in the front it was hard to make out the textures and brushwork of the painting. However, if the back side was lit up, the texture and brushwork became quite clear. Under the effect of the light, the thick oil paint on thin silk created intense contrasts, which created visual properties entirely different from paintings on canvas. I made some light boxes for the paintings, but found the heat generated by the lights would end up harming the silk after constant illumination over a long time. Unfortunately, no cool-running lights could be found at that time, so I stopped trying, as the experiment could not proceed until this problem was solved.

Nevertheless, I remained reluctant to abandon the idea of using silk as a support for my paintings. From 1998 onwards, I started to write out Arabic numerals with a fountain pen or pencil on silk(or sometimes on fine writing paper), repeating in an endless sequence the numbers 0 through9, leading to work relatively simple in terms of concept. I made these kinds of works intermittently over more than ten years. In the process, I became more and more familiar with the qualities of silk, gaining confidence in mastering clearly and deeply the material. In 2010, I discovered the Light Emitting Diode, or LED, a new high-tech energy-saving product that does not emit high temperatures. Even with long-term exposure, it did not influence the preservation of the silk, and led me to think it might be possible to return to painting on it; I began againto feel my way through an exploration of painting on silk.

Silk has a kind of material charm, an exceeding charm, but is as well exceedingly difficult to tame and control. It is thin, and hard to deal with because of how quickly it absorbs the oil in the paint; the silk provides a good foundation for the painting but the spread of the oil can cause it to lose its transparent quality. As well, silk is tough causing the large but flexible wooden frames to warp because of its powerful tensile strength. All these technical difficulties needed to be addressed one by one through seemingly endless experimentation. Failure and the damage of works was inevitable. It was often the case that months of efforts were cast to the winds because of an error with a small detail. This was a repeated cycle of delight and failure, yet it can be regarded as a kind of pleasure that can be found in manual craft; I felt like a craftsman who endeavored to make his work flawless and perfect.

After reaching a balance in the control of the materials, I began to work on improving my skills at oil painting on silk. The colors produced on it are not similar to those on canvas, because the color gradations are not determined by the color of the oil paint itself, but rather by the thickness of the paint. While this is just one example, it illustrates the need to have techniques different from those used in painting with oil on canvas. In order to realize the innate visual effects of oil painting on silk, in terms of color, light and shade, and transparency, while preserving the features of the material, it is necessary to change painting techniques developed over years, or even break with conventions.

This change in materials and an eventual breakthrough in technique have widened my creative landscape, motivating me to go on working, and inspiring me to generate innovative elements and source materials. At this time, I was happy and joyful being an artist; I felt the charms of artistic creation had arrived. Sometimes, I feel that contemporary art is like the story The Emperor's New Clothes; what we need is the boy who calls out that the emperor has no clothes on;I might not be that boy, but I am trying to be a good tailor.

Existence • Unreal • Reality

Many years ago, while facing a mirror, I sensed that between me and my image there was a relationship between Xu (虚,relating to the concepts of the unreal, emptiness, the imaginary, the virtual, and the void) and the real, and that to express this relationship between the unreal and reality in my paintings would be an interesting project. We cannot see ourselves blinking in a mirror, however, in a painting illustrating the corresponding relationships between paired images, we can both see ourselves blinking and also see another self-image which is more ideal. With this realization, I began to use paired images to explore all kinds of “Double Images”: the relationships between imagination and reality, reason and result, start and end, and origin and extension. The two pictures mirror each other; they each originate from the other but they are still different.

The production of “Double Images” has provided me with an interesting thinking process for many years. The works explored the movement from the concrete to the abstract, and from the abstract to the concrete in return, and as well, the extension of space from the one-dimensional to the two- and three-dimensional — sometimes I even attempted to work through the concepts of the indistinct fourth dimension. Occasionally, I found myself like an ant on the Möbius strip which perpetually wanders freely through two paradoxical but co-existing spaces.

In considering the concept of the “Double Images,” I believe that regardless of how the images are reciprocally mirrored, or what contradictions coexist between one visual space and another, they all still represent existence, that is, the existence of the unreal and of reality. It is the relationship between the unreal and reality that provides the basis used in carrying out my creation of paintings on silk.

The unreal is hazy. In spite of its limitations in visual communication with others, it can still effectively arouse a psychological demand for interaction. What indeed does not exist in the physical world only seems to provide even more material for communication with people; the illusionistic or unreal can be an endless driving force to trigger reactions between one’s innermost being and others’ personal psychology. In other words, the illusionary generates more spaces for thinking and imagination, and sparks unexpected mental exchanges between different audiences and me as a creator.

Yet in reality it is just the opposite; with great speed it can catch viewer’s eyes, and leaves further explanation totally unnecessary; it is so clear and profound that its existence cannot be neglected.

I chose to use the two sides of silk to realize this relationship between the real and unreal in a painting, and by means of a light source to achieve the prominence of the material’s characteristics and the true structure of the paintings. These artistic materials and creative forms can have organic connections to my process of thought. In these silk paintings, the illusionistic and reality lead to entirely different effects that belong to different areas of my thought process. They seem to be two separate areas while still being reflections of each other. Therefore, the imaginary and the real are not absolute and are interchangeable in this context.

In fact, the illusionary is somehow the representation of reality, presenting a kind of objective phenomenon or situation, or a reflection of our understanding and expectations. I hope this virtual reality expresses something real about society. Nonetheless, this kind of virtual image of social reality must eliminate the concerns of the insider, so that consequently reality can be converted to the unreal. However, in the meantime, doesn’t the corresponding and seemingly solid and beautiful image of reality provide a vision of society? Sometimes, the image of the real is no more than an illusion. Virtual reality can only draw on the false appearance of reality; to gain its existence, or existence at ease, it must escape the viewers’ perception, while the seeming perfect but false appearance of visual reality leads people to often neglect the real existence of the illusionary. Such combining and mutual crisscrossing of the unreal and real may allow the viewer to form, as the governing process, an unrestrained and racing subconscious mind. That is, in existence, everyone’s psychology points towards a particular form of existence: it may tentatively point to the unreal, or to reality, or to both, or even to a point unknown.

I hope in a roundabout way to satisfy my audience both visually and psychologically, meeting their requirement for pure pleasure in facing a work, or perhaps critiquing the rational for this requirement. As the creator, I also want to reach a psychological balance and find an emotional outlet through exploring the social reality of the virtual hidden behind perfect reality. The crossovers and deceptions between the virtual and reality provide me with pleasure during the creative process, which dissolves the hardships from painting and contemplation, and therefore I enjoy a happy relief. It can be said that the two-layered endeavor of contrasting transparent images is the starting point and final collecting place for my thinking process.

Over thousands of years, lasting into the formation of our current society in China, the Chinese people have been accustomed to expressing their thinking and feeling in an implicit way, consciously or subconsciously. So, reality tends to be represented in a form of illusion. What is particularly interesting is that when we try to express certain opinions or justifications in literal terms, such an approach is often found to be untenable for criticism and challenges. Therefore, with the passage of time, how does one determine what is illusionary? What is real? Sometimes people can distinguish, and other times they are unable to distinguish, or even don’t want to know the difference.

I wander between the spaces of reality and the unreal—we all do such wandering. The conversion of reality to the illusionary is an artificial process. Yet, it could be an indisputable natural process if we take a broad view of time and space.