.jpg?w=1)
拍品专文
BREAKING THROUGH THE NEW ASIAN CENTURY: THE EASTERN SPATIALISM OF CHU WEI BOR
Chu Wei-Bor was born of three generations of tailors, so from a young age he was immersed in the family business of cutting and pasting. His creations began with an Eastern aesthetic, and gradually subsumed the vocabulary of modern art. Having been born in Nanjing in 1929, his childhood and teenage life was filled with the history and culture of his surrounding city. Upon the outbreak of the Pacific War, he served as a signaller and eventually followed the army to Taiwan in 1949. His passion for art led him to befriend Ton Fan Group artists such as Ho Kan and Hsiao Chin, and he later joined the avant-garde movement as well – even meeting the founding of the movement Li Chun-Shan as a result. Aside from briefly learning from Liao Chi-Chun at his Yunho Studio, Chu also shocked the art world as an amateur by taking his “Knife-and-Scissors Spirit” to a grander aesthetic,kickstarting a New Spatialism in the East.
The Ton Fan Group aimed at taking root in the spirit of China’s rich and grand culture to explore new potentials for Chinese art and philosophy, in the hope of creating modern art with Eastern characteristics. Aside from Chu Wei-Bor, the group’s other key members included Li Yuan-Chia, Hsiao Chin, Ho Kan, Wu Hao, Hsia Yan, Oyan Wen-Yuen, Lee Shi-Chi, and more. Chu’s works are known for his variety, and upon joining the Ton Fan Group’s regular group exhibition in 1958, he started working ceaselessly. He was a quick learner and from as early as 1962 he moved beyond basing his works on visual aesthetics alone to grounding them in Chinese philosophy as well. In 1965, he took scissors and knives as his instrument to use digging, slashing, and cutting to expand the spatiality of his works. He said that “Fontana’s works emphasise a pure belief in Spatialism. My works use the extra dimensions to present Chinese philosophy’s pursuit of life.” Aside from a few representational works early in his career, most of his works are figurative and follow the creative process of wu wei (without exertion) to bridge and reflect upon the relationship between art and Chinese philosophy. Through paper cutting, glass block and wood block printing, and ink wash techniques, much practice was required to master each medium to attain perfection; in the 1980s he further founded the use of cutting and pasting fabric to create a new Eastern style of Spatialism.
The simplicity and purity of wu wei is core to Eastern aesthetics. It is said in Zhuang Zi’s Knowledge Rambling In The North that “(The operations of) Heaven and Earth proceed in the most admirable way, but they say nothing about them; the four seasons observe the clearest laws, but they do not discuss them ; all things have their complete and distinctive constitutions, but they say nothing about them.” Chu was a great believer in the Taoist spirit of Have and Have Not, and Eminence was created after he had become fully familiarised with the various organic reactions from cutting, slashing, and ink wash painting, having form and subject that is deeply instilled with the rhythms of the ink, conception, and poetry. The vermillion ink flows down with awe-inspiring power and the use of white on white distils the idea of nothingness to its zenith, Chu further highlighted the symbol of the circle to emphasize the all-encompassing form on the canvas, and the bunched-up fabric flows like the landscape in traditional Chinese ink wash paintings. The use of soft engravings to create positive and negative space, strengthened with the monochromatic white, result in a dynamic and coherent scene. The addition of other materials onto the canvas also serve to expand the multi-dimensional paradigm.
Chu’s works make use of a rich variety of techniques such as slicing, chopping, slashing, cutting, sticking, and piecing, and each period of his career is marked by different variations and changes. His “Knifeand- Scissors Spirit” is the one constant throughout his creations, and across his multitude of seemingly-unrelated creative mediums and environments, the use of paper cutting and woodblock printing elevated him to the state of Eastern Spatialism with the use of affixed fabrics. He never left the country to pursue popular artistic trends, and instead he gathered with his friends at the Painting Association of the East to study the primary vocabularies of Western Modernism, letting them focus his remarkably straightforward vision on honing his Eastern aesthetics, creating the zen conception of a “Formless Vessel” and instigating a paradigm shift of the work’s “space” into an entire “realm; in doing so, he also shows the world that his creative vocabulary is not limited by the constraints of language or geography. Under this creative paradigm that emphasises impulse rather than deliberateness, his works from this era would not be signed and dated until he senses that it is finished. This means that while this fabric collage work was published in the 1980s, it was not signed and dated until 1993. As an Asian abstractionist in the post-war era, Chu set his mind towards the character and form of nature itself, his works stand at the top of Asia’s representational and monochromatic schools, and his fine details and nuanced control over techniques are also imbued in an intellectual context which elevates his creations from the material plane to attain a spiritual existence.
Chu Wei-Bor was born of three generations of tailors, so from a young age he was immersed in the family business of cutting and pasting. His creations began with an Eastern aesthetic, and gradually subsumed the vocabulary of modern art. Having been born in Nanjing in 1929, his childhood and teenage life was filled with the history and culture of his surrounding city. Upon the outbreak of the Pacific War, he served as a signaller and eventually followed the army to Taiwan in 1949. His passion for art led him to befriend Ton Fan Group artists such as Ho Kan and Hsiao Chin, and he later joined the avant-garde movement as well – even meeting the founding of the movement Li Chun-Shan as a result. Aside from briefly learning from Liao Chi-Chun at his Yunho Studio, Chu also shocked the art world as an amateur by taking his “Knife-and-Scissors Spirit” to a grander aesthetic,kickstarting a New Spatialism in the East.
The Ton Fan Group aimed at taking root in the spirit of China’s rich and grand culture to explore new potentials for Chinese art and philosophy, in the hope of creating modern art with Eastern characteristics. Aside from Chu Wei-Bor, the group’s other key members included Li Yuan-Chia, Hsiao Chin, Ho Kan, Wu Hao, Hsia Yan, Oyan Wen-Yuen, Lee Shi-Chi, and more. Chu’s works are known for his variety, and upon joining the Ton Fan Group’s regular group exhibition in 1958, he started working ceaselessly. He was a quick learner and from as early as 1962 he moved beyond basing his works on visual aesthetics alone to grounding them in Chinese philosophy as well. In 1965, he took scissors and knives as his instrument to use digging, slashing, and cutting to expand the spatiality of his works. He said that “Fontana’s works emphasise a pure belief in Spatialism. My works use the extra dimensions to present Chinese philosophy’s pursuit of life.” Aside from a few representational works early in his career, most of his works are figurative and follow the creative process of wu wei (without exertion) to bridge and reflect upon the relationship between art and Chinese philosophy. Through paper cutting, glass block and wood block printing, and ink wash techniques, much practice was required to master each medium to attain perfection; in the 1980s he further founded the use of cutting and pasting fabric to create a new Eastern style of Spatialism.
The simplicity and purity of wu wei is core to Eastern aesthetics. It is said in Zhuang Zi’s Knowledge Rambling In The North that “(The operations of) Heaven and Earth proceed in the most admirable way, but they say nothing about them; the four seasons observe the clearest laws, but they do not discuss them ; all things have their complete and distinctive constitutions, but they say nothing about them.” Chu was a great believer in the Taoist spirit of Have and Have Not, and Eminence was created after he had become fully familiarised with the various organic reactions from cutting, slashing, and ink wash painting, having form and subject that is deeply instilled with the rhythms of the ink, conception, and poetry. The vermillion ink flows down with awe-inspiring power and the use of white on white distils the idea of nothingness to its zenith, Chu further highlighted the symbol of the circle to emphasize the all-encompassing form on the canvas, and the bunched-up fabric flows like the landscape in traditional Chinese ink wash paintings. The use of soft engravings to create positive and negative space, strengthened with the monochromatic white, result in a dynamic and coherent scene. The addition of other materials onto the canvas also serve to expand the multi-dimensional paradigm.
Chu’s works make use of a rich variety of techniques such as slicing, chopping, slashing, cutting, sticking, and piecing, and each period of his career is marked by different variations and changes. His “Knifeand- Scissors Spirit” is the one constant throughout his creations, and across his multitude of seemingly-unrelated creative mediums and environments, the use of paper cutting and woodblock printing elevated him to the state of Eastern Spatialism with the use of affixed fabrics. He never left the country to pursue popular artistic trends, and instead he gathered with his friends at the Painting Association of the East to study the primary vocabularies of Western Modernism, letting them focus his remarkably straightforward vision on honing his Eastern aesthetics, creating the zen conception of a “Formless Vessel” and instigating a paradigm shift of the work’s “space” into an entire “realm; in doing so, he also shows the world that his creative vocabulary is not limited by the constraints of language or geography. Under this creative paradigm that emphasises impulse rather than deliberateness, his works from this era would not be signed and dated until he senses that it is finished. This means that while this fabric collage work was published in the 1980s, it was not signed and dated until 1993. As an Asian abstractionist in the post-war era, Chu set his mind towards the character and form of nature itself, his works stand at the top of Asia’s representational and monochromatic schools, and his fine details and nuanced control over techniques are also imbued in an intellectual context which elevates his creations from the material plane to attain a spiritual existence.