qì sè: Chen Jie

15th June - 14th July, 2018

Artist｜Chen Jie

Preview｜Friday 15th June, 3pm 

Opening｜Friday 15th June, 4pm 

Venue｜Tong Gallery+Projects - L Space, D06, Main 2nd Street, 798 Art District, No. 2 Jiuxianqiao Rd, Beijing

qì sè

"Facing such beautiful landscape, I can't help but sob resentfully; so I remain in the bedchamber and sit alone in melancholy." is a quotation from A Sequel to the Ancient Verse: Seven Poems by Bao Zhao, the poet of Southern and Northern Dynasties. It is said that this is the earliest reference to the word "Feng Jing" (风景, landscape). Jing (景) supposedly mean the sunlight or shadow. When I read this sentence, I have an image in my mind of the military staff officer-Bao Zhao getting frustrated in the breeze when the sun shined over his face. The combination of Feng (风, wind) and Jing (景, sunlight) inattentively contributes to Chinese with such an important phrase. Then, I inadvertently watch a cloud in the mountains, which seems close to me, then flows gradually, and diffuses, dissolves, and disappears as if all the subtle colors that I observe did not arise. It feels extremely like, when you had candies in your childhood, the candies gradually melted in your mouth till the last sweetness disappeared. Then I suddenly realize how "Feng" (风, wind) is sighted in the poetic sentence: when the air flows, the thickness of the clouds changes; meanwhile, the sunlight casted upon the clouds generates changes between brightness and darkness, between warmth and chilliness. Thus, what is visible is Qi Se (气色). Hereby, "Feng" (风, wind) is a temporal indication. No matter how many feelings the viewer have, he can only sigh for the excessive passion facing the anicca (无常, impermanence) between the heaven and the earth. However, according to Su Shi (苏轼) "looking at things from the standpoint of change, then heaven and earth cannot remain the same for even an instant. Looking from the standpoint of not changing, then neither external objects nor the self have any limit. So what reason is there for envy?" Perhaps, such-and-such only becomes "Feng Jing" (风景, landscape)only when the poets catch the sight of the unrestrained object and transform it into linguistic term; and opinionatedly lament about it and indulge themselves in it.

I try to depict those "Feng Jing"(风景, landscape). I smudge the diluted pigments on the woven silk and paper, when they get very dry, I continue to smudge. Hence, the color blocks change a little bit accordingly; and the Qi Se remains every time they get air-dried, as If one can "look from the standpoint of not changing". While, Feng Jing (风景, landscape) cannot remain the same for even an instant only when it is soaked and air-dried on the silk and paper repeatedly.

Text/Chen Jie