二O二IIII.O三.二IX (2024.03.29)

Nature within Nature: The Inception of Impermanent Life with Stone, Grass, and Ink

I hope to use the stones, grass, wind, and rain in the natural environment to nurture an ink garden imbued with life. I want to create spontaneous, life-filled art by allowing life to bloom through my body and ink on the canvas. To me, the vitality of painting is reflected in the experience of each moment. As an artist, I am merely a conduit, providing a stage for life to showcase its innate vitality. When the painting is complete, I place it on a hill to become a part of nature, allowing it to undergo the baptism of wind, frost, and rain. Birth always accompanies decay. I hope that rain, wind, and time will erode the life I have nurtured, causing it to age and die. I believe that only by confronting impermanence, decay, and death in life can life become more profound. I see my work as an contemporary engagement with the asthetics of wabi-sabi 侘寂 and the concept of Ichi-go ichi-e 一期一会. Life is an imperfect and impermanent experience filled with countless unexpected encounters. There is a beauty of change I wish to embody in the form of performance and improvisation.

As a painter, I aspire to create art that is brimming with life. Life emerges from chaos, and its formation is irrational and unpredictable. To me, the beauty of nature and life is an embodied experience that transcends language. This experience is multidimensional, engaging our senses and spatial awareness in ways that are difficult to articulate. Therefore, I view painting not only as a visual medium but also as a tactile and auditory experience. In this creation, I collaborated with musician Ben Kinsinger for an improvisational duet of painting and music. We used stones and branches sourced from the environment to create music and painting in the air and on canvas, as well as in the natural environment of the Smart Museum courtyard, constructing a multidimensional sensory space. Music is painting, and painting is music; together, we cultivate an organic ecology from scratch in nature. This organic nature is reflected in the irreproducibility, unpredictability, and momentary essence of this performance.

Artists:

Yuheng Deng

Ben Kingsinger

Videographer:

Lucas Kult-Banout

Video Editing:

有情趣电影精选

Special Thanks:

Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago