Space of Fossil — Along to The Infinite

Introduction

Space of Fossil — Along to The Infinite A Space-Time Journey from Chinese Traditional Landscape Painting

Individual Work 2019 Fall, Chongqing

Content

“There are three kinds of Infinite Space in Chinese Landscape culture: Looking up to the peak from the bottom of the mountain (infinite height); Look into the back of the mountain in front of it (infinite depth); Look forward from near mountain to mountain faraway (infinite far).”

Guo Xi, Acient Chinese Literati Painter

“All the techniques of landscape painting could be summarized to compress the Vast and Infinite Universe in the small paper with imagination. We can only see one Layer of mountain, but we could image our Journey among Layers of mountain.”

Shen Kuo, Acient Chinese Literati Painter

[1] From Reality to Layers - Deconstruct Hidden Space Concept of Ancient Painters in the Chinese Landscape Painting

Chinese landscape painting and Chinese garden are two important mediums for ancient Chinese literati to express their ideas of space. From the Chinese point of view, the universe is infinite and vast, which is one of the core ideas of ancient Chinese philosophy and often symbolizes the broad mind and temperament of Chinese literati. But at the same time, the medium of expression of literati is limited. How to express the infinite space in the limited space has become one of the core topics of ancient Chinese art creation. In Chinese terminology, this is called seeing the big in the small.

Because of the special recognition of space and art creation, the space expression of Chinese landscape painting is very unique. There is no physical perspective in Chinese landscape painting, and we can only see the superposition, the layers, of the landscape one by one. In such a superposition, ancient Chinese literati painters sought for the rhythm of aesthetics and the expression of the infinite world. Moreover, those famous painters with high techniques never drew their paintings according to what the real world looks like, but reconstructed their journey in the nature, the hidden journey of literati, with their residual image memory.

[2] From Layers to Space-Time Journey - Reconstruct Chinese Landscape Experience based on Real Environment

The project explores how to deconstruct the space concept in the Chinese landscape painting, the infinite space and the hidden journey of literati, and how to reconstruct this Chinese landscape space in the real environment, building a Chinese landscape narrative experience. The design process of reconstruction repeated the creation mechanism of Chinese landscape painting: how to create the infinite space in a limited space, and how to hide the journey among the layers.

Ancient Chinese also had an advanced understanding of time. They believed that time was not only infinite, but also reincarnated. Through active observation, they became one of the first people in the world to set a time scale and they created the lunar calendar. Year after year, they used 24 solar terms according to the moon’s changing track to help them with their agricultural production. In this project, time is served as an additional dimension, which is related to the local water environment yearly changes and is associated tightly to the layer element, to complete the creation of the whole spacetime journey.