Introduction

Artist

Artist’s Biography

Essay

Observations on the Art of Fung Ming Chip

by Valerie C. Doran

-Raindrop

-Splash

-Light

-Transparent

-Hollow

These words, linked in a sequence, evoke both a sense of atmosphere and of progression.  On one level, the evocation is that of an ethereal transformation in nature: rain falling, dispelling, disintegrating into light, leaving clarity and emptiness behind. On another, more philosophical level, it is of a Zen-like process of transformation: from form to movement to illumination and, finally, to nothingness. In essence, the progression towards Nirvana.

In Fung Ming Chip’s exhibition To Be and Not to Be, these words (and their attendant connotations) are present as the names of calligraphic script types invented by the artist; scripts which he has used to inscribe the Chinese text of the Heart Sutra, and the single word ‘chan’ (Zen) on the scrolls gracing the space of his installation. The terms ‘Rain Script’, ‘Splash Script’, ‘Transparent Script’, ‘Hollow Script’ and others are thus both indicative and descriptive–not of content, but of gesture: of the physical, kinetic movements of the calligrapher as he moves through time, engaging with his materials of ink, water and paper, and of the gestural effects of the marks he leaves behind. Characters are seen splashed onto paper, illuminated by shadow, floating up from beneath layers of ink, filled at their core with emptiness. And thus Fung’s invented scripts also bear a subtly semantic relationship to the literal content of the Heart Sutra’s calligraphed lines:

Without form there is no emptiness.

Without emptiness there is no form.

Form is then emptiness. Emptiness is then form.

Feeling, thought, volition and consciousness are also like this.

Sariptura, all these dharmas are phenomena,

No created, not destroyed,

Not defiled, not pure,

Not increasing, not decreasing.

Fung’s fascination with the Heart Sutra lies in its presentation of the ontological conundrum of form and emptiness as existing simultaneously, one within the other, and yet as separate states. In the installation of his ‘concept section’, the artist has created a multi-dimensional and multi-textural exploration of this existential conundrum. ‘Form’ exists variously in the objects he has placed in the installation—calligraphy scrolls, bookcase, marks he has drawn on the floor and the wall; in the calligraphed character for the word ‘form’ repeated in the Heart Sutra scrolls; in the formal, gestural effects created by his script types in the calligraphic texts written on the scroll and wall surfaces; and in the totality of the physical relationships among all these things. Emptiness exists in the open, central space delineated by the presence of the walls and the lines on the floor; in the calligraphed characters for the word ‘emptiness’ in the Heart Sutra scrolls; in the effects of fading, translucence, and transparency created in the written texts through a brilliant manipulation of water and ink; and in a single scroll which has had its heart cut out, and whose empty space reveals text written on the wall behind.

As an experimental calligrapher, Fung has always sought to discover new layers of conceptual and structural freedom within calligraphy’s organic terrain of text and form. This seeking involves to some degree a process of deconstruction, in which he separates, analyses, scrambles and then reconstructs in his own manner the elements that constitute the calligraphic art form. To him, the essence of calligraphy lies in the relationship and interplay between text, line and motion: and it is this relationship that reveals the most essential element of calligraphy, which Fung defines not as line, but as time. By nature of its text-based format calligraphy requires following a linear passage through time, similar to the way a dancer follows choreographic codes or a musician follows a score.

But rather than seeking virtuosity of line and brushwork, which in traditional connoisseurship is considered the supreme achievement, Fung focuses on the exploration of text as a spatial and temporal element that can be dismantled, reconstructed and even made retroactive, and he wields ink, water, brush and paper and text as experimental tools in this process. In past works the artist experimented with moving beyond calligraphy’s traditional, two-dimensional format, creating sculptural works that presented an unusual, three-dimensional fusion of calligraphy and seal carving. As in the present exhibition, he has also played with the idea of creating alternative environments of encounter between audience and text.  In the group exhibition ‘Looking for Antonio Mak’ (Hong Kong Museum of Art, 2008-09), for example, Fung constructed a completely dark, cave-like space where calligraphic texts consisting of Fung’s own poems or of statements by Western and Chinese artists and thinkers were scrawled onto the walls. Viewers could only discover and read the texts by moving through the darkness with a only small hand-held flashlight to guide them.

Yetno matter how far Fung takes his experimentations, the centrality of text is always preserved: otherwise, he says, he would not be a calligrapher. In this way Fung differs from contemporary artists such as Xu Bing or QiuZhengzhong who have undertaken a radical deconstruction of calligraphy by negating or even completely severing its link to text. Such artists, says Fung, are not calligraphers, but conceptualists. His passion is to expand the possibilities for interactions and intersections of text, ink, water, time, space, and surface, retaining and adding on to these ingredients rather than eliminating them.

Valerie C. Doran is a Hong-Kong based critic, curator and translator specializing in the field of contemporary Asian art with a special interest in cultural cross-currents and comparative art theory. 

Documentation

Opening Reception
Tuesday 23 October 2012, 6.30pm
 
  
  
 
 
 
 

Artist’s Talk
Saturday 27 October 2012, 3pm