Jing Zhou: Purity
Artist(s):
Title:
- Purity
Exhibition:
Creation Year:
- 2008
Category:
Artist Statement:
Everything we see is changing and losing its balance moment by moment. This is where beauty exists: when one has a calm mind, when behind the endless change a background of perfect harmony is revealed. Infinity (top) reflects that in the realm of Ch’an, infinite and constant change performs against a background of perfect tranquility, which also indicates that change and evolution are the key ingredients of infinite beauty in our lives. Navigating across the sky, the birds are symbols of change. The mighty, serene mountains convey the idea of perfect harmony. Connected by many white circles and lines that originate from the ancient Chinese numeric system, the space, interchanging forms, limitless time, distance in between, and countless elements address the conception of infinity in this image.
Compared to other images in my Ch’an Mind, Zen Mind series, Purity (bottom) has less symbolic meaning, but more sensuous and emotional inspiration. The calmness and serenity of this image is rooted in memories of my own pilgrimage to Buddhist temples. My choice of a Chinese painting of the lotus, abstract brush works of sitting figures, and even the use of colors was intuitive. While creating, many of my decisions are not rational deductions; I simply try to capture what I sense and feel at that moment.
As a Chinese artist living in the western world, I am aware of art and philosophy from both cultures. I create artworks for the sake of my own spirit, for color and arrangement in each image, and for making visible the concepts that gave birth to the images. I want my viewers to look at my images through magical windows into a deep, secondary space, enriched by my spiritual experience.
My artistic images form a visual communication that interacts in several collective dialogues. These dialogues are between eternity and transience, oneness and variety, existence and emptiness. At the core of my art is an attempt to attain moments of transcendence, to reach artless-art, emptiness, self-unconsciousness, and self-forgetfulness. In other words, artistic creation is a process of expressing my true nature via “being” human.
