Hundun – The Perception of Hidden Truth by Lo Tsen, 2019
The Ruler of the Southern Ocean was named Shu, the Ruler of the Northern Ocean was named Hu, and the Ruler of the Center was Hundun. To repay Hundun for his hospitality and kindness, Shu and Hu conferred with each other and said: “People all have seven orifices, with which they see, hear, eat and breathe. But Hundun doesn’t have any. What a pity. Let’s carve out seven orifices for him!” Every day, Shu and Hu carved out one orifice for Hundun. And at the end of seven days, Hundun died.
– Zhuangzi, Chapter 7
When Hundun is Hundun, he has no apertures to sense the world and lives in a state of unknowing. But when Hundun gains access to the world, he is no longer Hundun. This explains how it is that human wisdom must be one with nature. The story of Hundun also elucidates the nature of existence: Other than our innate attributes, we too are actually much like Hundun. We are harmed by people’s preconceptions. And just like Shu and Hu, in our ignorance we harm others. This story can also explain the origin of the endless disputes and conflicts in the world. And the philosophy of Zhuangzi leads us to the loftiest realm and the highest pursuit of the spirit.
If we consider the nature of existence, the process of living is truly an unending exercise in spiritual cultivation. The greater our adversity, the mightier our power to overcome it. And no matter what journey through time and space each individual has traveled, perhaps our realizations of life and the scope of our perception are in fact the true likeness of our existences. I have had the experience of residing in several countries. I feel my own view of the environment and the land, culture and people always goes beyond the dimension of physical reality and harks back to a consideration of my fundamental view of human nature.
As civilization has evolved and humanity’s way of living and perspective on life has changed, the appearance of the world has constantly changed as well. New problems keep arising – the deterioration of the environment, terrorism, and populism, each one progressing toward the extreme – and these are a source of great distress. Wars erupt and populations scatter, tainting human history just as in ancient times. We have no means to thwart disaster. With our manmade calamities, we constantly damage nature and wipe one another out. When pondering these issues, one cannot help but wonder, as civilization has gone through its long, slow process of evolution, just how much has the primitive nature of humankind actually been elevated?
Life is like climbing through the high mountains, a heavy trek amongst peaks and valleys. One can deeply sense the insignificance of people and the web of cause and effect that binds humanity with nature in a common fate. The many things I’ve felt concern about in the past have become assimilated within me, as if they were injected into my veins and are circulating through bloodstream, forming a clear conceptual thread. When comparing the themes of my solo exhibitions over many years – “Essential Form, Distortion,” “Genetic Map,” “Genealogy of Essential Forms,” “Habitation of Essential Form,” “Regeneration, Essence” – one can readily detect a consistency in what I explore and what I care about in life.
I have engaged in ink painting for over ten years. Yet this is my first exhibition to exclusively feature works in ink painting. Ink is hardly a new medium for me; indeed, it is like my mother tongue. I use this analogy because as a young child, I learned calligraphy from my father. Then in grade school I often competed in calligraphy competitions, and in junior high school I often wrote entire articles in the small form of the standard script for notice boards. However, in my teens, with the rise in popularity of Western culture, I took to reading Western literature, and used the calligraphic brush less than before.
When I was 24, I studied basic-level traditional Chinese painting for a year under the artist Su Feng-Nan, trying my hand at the seasonal subjects of plum blossoms, orchids, bamboo, and chrysanthemums. During that year I became fascinated by the stones we would paint next to the bamboo and orchids. That was the beginning of my understanding of chun texturing, which became a major element of my ink paintings for many years.
In 1973, I moved overseas with my husband, who served in the diplomatic corps and was stationed abroad. From then on, I lived in a series of foreign countries for 21 years. Even though during that time we did return to Taiwan to live for a while, as part of the rotation system, I still felt as if I were a rolling stone, lacking accumulated experience in my birth culture. In 2004, we finally returned to settle in Taiwan. In those early days I often eagerly rushed to the National Palace Museum to see the works on display, filling in the gaps I sensed within myself. When viewing the calligraphy of masters down through the ages, I was always deeply drawn to the feibai (“flying white”) technique of the cursive script. I discovered that the permeable buoyancy expressed by a dry brush possessed a certain unrestrained, intangible power and beauty. Later I applied that concept of brushwork to my acrylic paintings, constantly honing it, and creating a series of works expressed in what has been described as a language like silk.
What I also hoped to explore through ink painting was this: After having been nurtured in calligraphy and the Oriental aesthetic in my early years, having lived half my life in several countries overseas, impacted by and baptized in several different cultures both Eastern and Western, having traveled my own circuitous artistic path, constantly learning on my own and cultivating my soul, when I returned to creative expression in ink, where I had first begun, what would be the appearance of this cumulative experience over the course of time? As an artist who believes in naturalness, I have not ever planned any theme or statement in advance. I have not intentionally tried to express anything, but only sincerely pursued my practice with the expectation that it would occur naturally.
It is ultimately impossible to measure exactly what is hidden within the boundless world of the human subconscious and consciousness – we only witness the reverberations afterwards. Put more precisely, the soul directly channels itself onto the canvas, and as the one who acts with my hands, I am merely the agent. After I have finished a work, I still must repeatedly look back and question, reflect and trace back in search of a physical manifestation that can correspond with the truth and its coalescence and perception, before it genuinely counts as being complete. This essay is only a simple description of my creative process, bearing witness to my beliefs about art. Socrates once said that the purpose of philosophy is the pursuit of truth, not persuasion. Is it not the same with art?
The Ruler of the Southern Ocean was named Shu, the Ruler of the Northern Ocean was named Hu, and the Ruler of the Center was Hundun. To repay Hundun for his hospitality and kindness, Shu and Hu conferred with each other and said: “People all have seven orifices, with which they see, hear, eat and breathe. But Hundun doesn’t have any. What a pity. Let’s carve out seven orifices for him!” Every day, Shu and Hu carved out one orifice for Hundun. And at the end of seven days, Hundun died.
– Zhuangzi, Chapter 7
When Hundun is Hundun, he has no apertures to sense the world and lives in a state of unknowing. But when Hundun gains access to the world, he is no longer Hundun. This explains how it is that human wisdom must be one with nature. The story of Hundun also elucidates the nature of existence: Other than our innate attributes, we too are actually much like Hundun. We are harmed by people’s preconceptions. And just like Shu and Hu, in our ignorance we harm others. This story can also explain the origin of the endless disputes and conflicts in the world. And the philosophy of Zhuangzi leads us to the loftiest realm and the highest pursuit of the spirit.
If we consider the nature of existence, the process of living is truly an unending exercise in spiritual cultivation. The greater our adversity, the mightier our power to overcome it. And no matter what journey through time and space each individual has traveled, perhaps our realizations of life and the scope of our perception are in fact the true likeness of our existences. I have had the experience of residing in several countries. I feel my own view of the environment and the land, culture and people always goes beyond the dimension of physical reality and harks back to a consideration of my fundamental view of human nature.
As civilization has evolved and humanity’s way of living and perspective on life has changed, the appearance of the world has constantly changed as well. New problems keep arising – the deterioration of the environment, terrorism, and populism, each one progressing toward the extreme – and these are a source of great distress. Wars erupt and populations scatter, tainting human history just as in ancient times. We have no means to thwart disaster. With our manmade calamities, we constantly damage nature and wipe one another out. When pondering these issues, one cannot help but wonder, as civilization has gone through its long, slow process of evolution, just how much has the primitive nature of humankind actually been elevated?
Life is like climbing through the high mountains, a heavy trek amongst peaks and valleys. One can deeply sense the insignificance of people and the web of cause and effect that binds humanity with nature in a common fate. The many things I’ve felt concern about in the past have become assimilated within me, as if they were injected into my veins and are circulating through bloodstream, forming a clear conceptual thread. When comparing the themes of my solo exhibitions over many years – “Essential Form, Distortion,” “Genetic Map,” “Genealogy of Essential Forms,” “Habitation of Essential Form,” “Regeneration, Essence” – one can readily detect a consistency in what I explore and what I care about in life.
I have engaged in ink painting for over ten years. Yet this is my first exhibition to exclusively feature works in ink painting. Ink is hardly a new medium for me; indeed, it is like my mother tongue. I use this analogy because as a young child, I learned calligraphy from my father. Then in grade school I often competed in calligraphy competitions, and in junior high school I often wrote entire articles in the small form of the standard script for notice boards. However, in my teens, with the rise in popularity of Western culture, I took to reading Western literature, and used the calligraphic brush less than before.
When I was 24, I studied basic-level traditional Chinese painting for a year under the artist Su Feng-Nan, trying my hand at the seasonal subjects of plum blossoms, orchids, bamboo, and chrysanthemums. During that year I became fascinated by the stones we would paint next to the bamboo and orchids. That was the beginning of my understanding of chun texturing, which became a major element of my ink paintings for many years.
In 1973, I moved overseas with my husband, who served in the diplomatic corps and was stationed abroad. From then on, I lived in a series of foreign countries for 21 years. Even though during that time we did return to Taiwan to live for a while, as part of the rotation system, I still felt as if I were a rolling stone, lacking accumulated experience in my birth culture. In 2004, we finally returned to settle in Taiwan. In those early days I often eagerly rushed to the National Palace Museum to see the works on display, filling in the gaps I sensed within myself. When viewing the calligraphy of masters down through the ages, I was always deeply drawn to the feibai (“flying white”) technique of the cursive script. I discovered that the permeable buoyancy expressed by a dry brush possessed a certain unrestrained, intangible power and beauty. Later I applied that concept of brushwork to my acrylic paintings, constantly honing it, and creating a series of works expressed in what has been described as a language like silk.
What I also hoped to explore through ink painting was this: After having been nurtured in calligraphy and the Oriental aesthetic in my early years, having lived half my life in several countries overseas, impacted by and baptized in several different cultures both Eastern and Western, having traveled my own circuitous artistic path, constantly learning on my own and cultivating my soul, when I returned to creative expression in ink, where I had first begun, what would be the appearance of this cumulative experience over the course of time? As an artist who believes in naturalness, I have not ever planned any theme or statement in advance. I have not intentionally tried to express anything, but only sincerely pursued my practice with the expectation that it would occur naturally.
It is ultimately impossible to measure exactly what is hidden within the boundless world of the human subconscious and consciousness – we only witness the reverberations afterwards. Put more precisely, the soul directly channels itself onto the canvas, and as the one who acts with my hands, I am merely the agent. After I have finished a work, I still must repeatedly look back and question, reflect and trace back in search of a physical manifestation that can correspond with the truth and its coalescence and perception, before it genuinely counts as being complete. This essay is only a simple description of my creative process, bearing witness to my beliefs about art. Socrates once said that the purpose of philosophy is the pursuit of truth, not persuasion. Is it not the same with art?