Guo Fengyi: Cosmic Meridians (II)
Duration: 4 MARCH 12:00 AM - 3 APRIL 11:59 AM (CST), 2023
What is Guo Fengyi's Painting Called? What is the Meaning of Natural Superpower? What is the Human Numerical Code? From the Beginning up until Now, the Human Brain Has Passed through All of These Animals?
These contradictory and somewhat disparate questions stem from the artist Guo Fengyi’s naming of her works. Perhaps, they can be considered as sorts of ‘themes’ of her practices, but they are rather Guo’s awareness of problems when she was still in her early stage of enlightenment; and they are the innocence and impetus of still being able to question.
Using thin and dense lines to sketch repetitively and orderly is fundamental to Guo’s painting, as if the capturing of figures depends on these delicate and lavish curves, and the figures do not have skins or actual bodily organs but merely body-like contours that are vaguely recognisable. For Guo Fengyi, a long-term Qigong practitioner who reads extensively on ancient Chinese culture, she surely understands the idea that ‘the flow is the message’ and the wonderous experience engendered between ‘the cosmos and the body’, so that almost all of her paintings illustrate a spiritual magnetic field in constant flowing.
Numbers are another crucial element appearing regularly in her paintings, and the way they are used is evidently not a result of any aesthetic strategy but rather an inheritance of the idea of ‘inner numbers’ derived from the system of ‘inner proof’ in ancient China. It is a mathematical system that is used to monitor and infer the origin of the universe, the natural evolution, and the historical changes, but Guo further incorporates it into her self-invented linguistic system. Different numbers bestow commands upon various actions, placed into divergent arrangements and ordered combinations. From this perspective, numbers are no longer mathematical counting but language itself for Guo.
--Excerpted from Wang Huan's Introduction for the exhibition Guo Fengyi: Cosmic Meridians
About Guo Fengyi
Guo Fengyi (1942–2010, Xi’an, China) is a self-trained female artist whose artistic practice articulates a particular journey of spiritual and metaphysical significance, belonging to an older generation whose embrace of Chinese folk culture imparts a unique knowledge of history, myth, and mystery. Her works on paper are composed of finely controlled brushwork that blend and weave into a composition of lustrous images; suggestions of both human figures and otherworldly beings.
Guo Fengyi began practicing Qigong (a traditional Chinese health maintenance practice that cultivates the qi energy within the body) as a way to alleviate illness. Accompanying her ever-deepening study into the philosophies of mysticism, she began having powerful visions that she felt compelled to give form to through drawing, as a way to adjust the balance between her body and her spiritual world. The subject matter of her works, as well as the concepts and physical structures she uses, comes from traditional Chinese systems of thought; cosmology, acupuncture energy maps, divination, sage kings, geomancy and dynastic grave sites—all of which have become dispensable in a modernizing China. Through her works, Guo Fengyi acts as a convergence point of traditional and contemporary thought, preserving cultural memories hidden deep within Chinese society. Through the physical act of drawing, Guo Fengyi charges the events of today’s world with a profound significance, both as an act of creativity as well as an act of everyday life.
Guo Fengyi’s first foray into the contemporary art world was her participation in the 2002 “Long March- A Walking Visual Display”, in which she produced site specific works at Lijiang, Yunnan Province, China, and collaborated with American artist Judy Chicago. Those works bore titles such as Lugu Lake, Lijiang, The Mosuo, Kunming, and If Women Ruled the World.
Guo Fengyi: Cosmic Meridians (II)
Duration: 4 MARCH 12:00 AM
- 3 APRIL 11:59 AM (CST), 2023
What is Guo Fengyi's Painting Called? What is the Meaning of Natural Superpower? What is the Human Numerical Code? From the Beginning up until Now, the Human Brain Has Passed through All of These Animals?
These contradictory and somewhat disparate questions stem from the artist Guo Fengyi’s naming of her works. Perhaps, they can be considered as sorts of ‘themes’ of her practices, but they are rather Guo’s awareness of problems when she was still in her early stage of enlightenment; and they are the innocence and impetus of still being able to question.
Using thin and dense lines to sketch repetitively and orderly is fundamental to Guo’s painting, as if the capturing of figures depends on these delicate and lavish curves, and the figures do not have skins or actual bodily organs but merely body-like contours that are vaguely recognisable. For Guo Fengyi, a long-term Qigong practitioner who reads extensively on ancient Chinese culture, she surely understands the idea that ‘the flow is the message’ and the wonderous experience engendered between ‘the cosmos and the body’, so that almost all of her paintings illustrate a spiritual magnetic field in constant flowing.
Numbers are another crucial element appearing regularly in her paintings, and the way they are used is evidently not a result of any aesthetic strategy but rather an inheritance of the idea of ‘inner numbers’ derived from the system of ‘inner proof’ in ancient China. It is a mathematical system that is used to monitor and infer the origin of the universe, the natural evolution, and the historical changes, but Guo further incorporates it into her self-invented linguistic system. Different numbers bestow commands upon various actions, placed into divergent arrangements and ordered combinations. From this perspective, numbers are no longer mathematical counting but language itself for Guo.
--Excerpted from Wang Huan's Introduction for the exhibition Guo Fengyi: Cosmic Meridians
About Guo Fengyi
Guo Fengyi (1942–2010, Xi’an, China) is a self-trained female artist whose artistic practice articulates a particular journey of spiritual and metaphysical significance, belonging to an older generation whose embrace of Chinese folk culture imparts a unique knowledge of history, myth, and mystery. Her works on paper are composed of finely controlled brushwork that blend and weave into a composition of lustrous images; suggestions of both human figures and otherworldly beings.
Guo Fengyi began practicing Qigong (a traditional Chinese health maintenance practice that cultivates the qi energy within the body) as a way to alleviate illness. Accompanying her ever-deepening study into the philosophies of mysticism, she began having powerful visions that she felt compelled to give form to through drawing, as a way to adjust the balance between her body and her spiritual world. The subject matter of her works, as well as the concepts and physical structures she uses, comes from traditional Chinese systems of thought; cosmology, acupuncture energy maps, divination, sage kings, geomancy and dynastic grave sites—all of which have become dispensable in a modernizing China. Through her works, Guo Fengyi acts as a convergence point of traditional and contemporary thought, preserving cultural memories hidden deep within Chinese society. Through the physical act of drawing, Guo Fengyi charges the events of today’s world with a profound significance, both as an act of creativity as well as an act of everyday life.
Guo Fengyi’s first foray into the contemporary art world was her participation in the 2002 “Long March- A Walking Visual Display”, in which she produced site specific works at Lijiang, Yunnan Province, China, and collaborated with American artist Judy Chicago. Those works bore titles such as Lugu Lake, Lijiang, The Mosuo, Kunming, and If Women Ruled the World.
