Chin-Cheng's Installation

About The Installations

Like other Chinese traditional calligraphers, I started to learn Chinese calligraphy when I was young – 13 years old, and continued for more than 20 years. The concept of my installations references and critiques the role of calligraphy in traditional Chinese culture.

Indispensably, people who would like to study Chinese calligraphy have to experience the long-winded and painful phase of imitation by tracing the ancient famous calligraphers’ works or stone tablets in a manner similar to the academic training of painting. There is no doubt that those famous works and stone tablets are the painstaking masterpieces and elaborate efforts of the predecessors. From a comprehensive imitation, the learner can achieve the proficient techniques of calligraphic style.

Although imitation is the one and only way of studying calligraphy, it also could decrease and even wreck the creativity of a calligrapher, as is expressed by the aphorism (Chinese proverb) “Jumping into tablet is easy, but jumping out of tablet is difficult”. Molding a personal artistic style is the end purpose and common aspiration for most artists, as well as it is for me.

I want my installations involving calligraphic work to be considered fine art. The tensions between the roles and reputations of calligraphic art and fine art interest me, but I have experienced frustrations here due both to the opacity of written content for non-Chinese speaking individuals and the difficulty for those untrained in this discipline to ascertain nuances of calligraphic form, and I have allowed this to focus my methods. I sense that installational form is capable of conveying the significance of Chinese calligraphy and its philosophical content to abroad and Western audience.

Convention, Imitation, and Creation

“Convention, Imitation, and Creation” was the installation piece in which I tried top express the new calligraphic ideas, materials, and techniques to the audiences. It was not only the reproduction of stone tablets and new materials, but it also showed with intensity the self-contradiction of convention and creation. In this piece, I used Chinese ink mixed with acrylic to write calligraphy on acetate, which was suspended from ceiling. The transparent material brilliantly gave my calligraphy a beautiful visual effect. I tried to break through the rule of traditional style in which Chinese calligraphy is always to be created on rice paper. The imitation of stone tablets was set on the floor paved with sand that symbolizes a deep concern with my cultural tensions. I admire, cherish, and also hate the calligraphic traditions, which let me investigate it over and over again.

Mr. Five Willows

The making of calligraphic works, using Chinese calligraphic brush form, is very important for every calligrapher, and I am still studying. I utilized this technique in my second installation, “Mr. Five Willows”. The completely transparent surface upon which the calligraphic characters were formed not only displayed the beautiful brushwork of calligraphy, but also expressed the timeless concept of calligraphy itself and the relation between convention and creation. The installation lighting casts shadows from the calligraphic characters. This format for presenting calligraphy dramatically departs from its 3,000 years tradition, and at the same time, resituates it in a fine art context. It addresses that traditional culture is always existent and to be presented and developed day by day. In this piece, ancient Chinese poetry or famous proverbs that convey the Chinese philosophy of life to the viewers were the content of my calligraphy. As counterpart, and in effort to overcome a language barrier, I chose E. E. Cumming’s poem, “Portrait”, to represent a Western philosophy of life and displayed it as part of “Mr. Five Willows”. To me, these two poems have a common sensibility about how one is to be involved in life. I also wrote my own poetry to enhance and interpret my work such as “Good-naturedness Leads Propitiousness”.

Imitation

“Imitation”, which followed from “Mr. Five Willows”, led me to find out the truth that Chinese calligraphy can speak by itself without any translation. The language of visual form restates the philosophical context, and gave the audiences an insight into the deep cultural background and the process of learning Chinese calligraphy. I wrote four of the most famous masterpieces from Chinese calligraphic history on long pieces of narrow Chinese silk, then hung them into a bowl shape to contain the dogma – the Chinese jar which was full of water. To make Chinese ink from ink stick is time-consuming. Most Chinese people know the parable that the study of calligraphy starts with making so much ink that a jar of water similar to the jar in the installation would be emptied. Then he/she can start to learn calligraphy. To the viewers, “Imitation” tells the story and suggests my personal experience of learning calligraphy, which is visually beautiful, but my memory of it is painful.

Observation and Obscuration

“Observation and Obscuration” is an attempt to further define the meaning of my installations. During my experience in graduate school, when people looked at my installation, they only treated it as a beautiful piece of an unfamiliar language and visual work. The interpretation was indistinct. So I sunk into the powerless circumstance of creation. I often asked myself, “Should I translate the text of my work or not”? “Observation and Obscuration” provides the answer, which is “No”.

In “Observation and Obscuration”, I again utilize transparent Mylar to write upon; however, this time, it is placed within a wooden structure, a box 2’ x 4’ x 1’, with thousands of holes of 1/4” diameter drilled in its face, top, and sides. When people look at this work, I want the viewers to each look through their own openings into the light, to look closer and to step away, to move faster or slower. Each individual has a different view, and that is my point, which I am trying to convey. “When people look at a mountain, the mountain is not a mountain”, which has been frequently discussed in Chinese philosophic field, suggests that the appearance of an object, sometimes, cannot represent itself; it could be a hallucination.