The Republic and Qiu Shui

  DING Shiwei, JIN Yanan, LIU Guoqiang, YI Lian

  2021.3.6 - 4.17

Zhuangzi. Qiushui 

Zhuangzi and Huizi swam above Haoliang. Zhuangzi said, "The fish is leisurely travelling, and it's the pleasure of the fish." Huizi said, "The son is not a fish, and the joy of knowing the fish?" Zhuangzi said, "Zi is not me. Do you know that I don't know the joy of fish?" Huizi said, "I'm not a son, I don't know the son, the son is not a fish, I don't know the joy of fish, it's all." Zhuangzi said, "Please follow the original. The son said that you know the fish and the clouds, and you know that I know it and ask me, and I know it.

Plato, the ideal country

Socrates: Dear Graucon, now we must use this metaphor for the things we talked about earlier. The cave cell is like a visible world, and the firelight is like the ability of the sun. Since you are eager to listen to my explanation, you can understand my explanation when you associate the rising process from the cave to the earth and seeing things on the ground with the rising process of the soul rising to the knowable world. As for whether this explanation itself is correct, only God knows. But in any case, I think that the last thing to see in the knowable world, and it takes a lot of effort to finally see, is the concept of goodness. Once we see it, we must be able to draw the following conclusions: it is indeed the reason for all right and beautiful people in all things, that is, those who create light and light sources in the visible world, and the decisive source of truth and reason in the world; anyone who can act rationally in private or public life. , must have seen the concept of goodness.

Some philosophers once said that Western philosophers are just making notes to Plato. The cave story told by Plato in the ideal country is the first time that human beings think philosophically about true or false. Similarly, our Chinese Zhuangzi also raised the fundamental question of what is true in Chinese culture for the first time. The two philosophers of the East and the West coincidently put forward what is the relationship between existence and our individual? And this problem is not only a philosopher, but also what artists need to face from ancient times to the present. The torture of existence is also a questioning of the beauty.

In the book Landscape Society, Guidebo describes our existing social form: the scene stream can take away everything in front of it, and others are also at the same mercy of this simplified emotional world. From the beginning of the industrial revolution to today, possessing material desires has been gradually replaced by false landscapes. The public is influenced by the media and is more and more distant from the existence of ontology. Graphics has become the foundation or even all of art. What's more ridiculous is that many artists deviate from the inner real experience, but just follow the commentary routine, so they explain the so-called creation path in multiple levels and dimensions. This false description deepens the weightless landscape reality. How to get out of the text and images, get rid of the feeling of loss, truly follow the heart, and create with sincerity to art has become a yardstick for every artist.

The four artists who participated in this exhibition are trying to uncover the false appearance in their hearts on their respective paths. Their paths are different, and the goals of finding them are also different. In the end, they will definitely leave traces on the way of exploration. Their mental journey, like Plato's ideal country and Zhuangzi's autumn water, is the same as that of Plato. Instead of explaining it with words that seems clear now, we should directly open the words of these two great philosophies and let the classics travel to the present.

In fact, the reinterpretation of art happens every day, constantly rewriting and even hyping the classics, turning more misunderstood in the past into correct solutions, and converting the positive solutions into misreading. It is exactly this way to go back and forth, pushing human consciousness, like the universe, farther, bigger and deeper, and further invades the subconscious. The domain, of course, is from nothing, like visible light, and will never illuminate all the darkness, but isn't this the origin and meaning of the artist's creation? Their four works, which seem to be popular and awesome, can be put together, but establish a dark line, like a sharp horn with a sharp blade, constantly breaking through the layer of falsehood in front of their eyes.

Duchamp brought ready-made objects to contemporary art, a handy-to-hand industrial product, and also magnificently entered the art hall. Today, if you continue to discuss and extend the concept of ready-made, you can try to use the classics of the past to interpret the creation of current artists. From this perspective, each generation of artistic creation seems to be repeating, but it is precisely because of the differences in time and space that every important spiritual work conveys the feelings of different times. At the same time, the truth of the existence of the ontology will continue to appear.