Memorial Plaque: Consciousness of Life’s Course in Fanjiang Mingdao’s Artistic Conception

　　Fanjiang Mingdao’s creative work originates from his ex originates from his experiential sense of the self’s will to life. Moreover, it depends on a rational spirit of reflection on life’s value. Our artist seems to possess innate theoretical insight; thus, his creative work proceeds with a clear assumption of meaningfulness. Unlike conceptual treatments in some contemporary art which habitually tend toward indeterminate visual formats, Fanjiang Mingdao tries to configure a grand premise which has the nature of a memorial plaque. Of course this relates to the prosperous family into which Fanjiang Mingdao was born in 1950, as well as his youthful period of studies in design art which he commenced in 1980. Fanjiang’s abundant, pluralistic fund of know-how, along with exposure to different cultures, have given a nomadic trans-cultural scope to his cultural vision. Perhaps one should say that Fanjiang Mingdao rarely shows the kind of political awareness that has been universal among Chinese contemporary artists since 1980. Yet differences in identity and perception make us in China unable, using the narrative logic of contemporary Chinese art history, to sort out principles of contemporaneity in our creative work. One could even say that Fanjiang Mingdao puts more emphasis on purity and refinement of language. His inner artistic cultivation and talents make him more adept at capturing graceful, benign, introspective structures of narrative. Overly expulsive and intensely oppositional forms of visual display are unfamiliar objects of perusal for him, but not encounters from within his own being. Thus the aesthetic intent expressed in Fanjiang Mingdao’s creative production often goes beyond thematic elucidation to take an independent direction of growth. Fanjiang Mingdao is deeply aware of the intellectual sources of our traditional culture. Thus the Oriental wisdom implicit in his works makes itself understood without being proclaimed. However, Fanjiang spend the most active, intellectually curious years of his youth in the milieu of American culture and art. Thus in his mode of thinking and work, he is more concerned with possibilities of communicating through his art in a “real” temporal setting. That is to say, Fanjiang Mingdao’s artistic production does not just indicate the presence of an inner voice: he would rather view creative work in a strictly classical sense as something with monumentality, as an enduring monument to the will. Unlike post-modern thinking which dissolves the parameters of traditional knowledge, Fanjiang Mingdao tries to set up norms and rational order. His artistic forms unavoidably touch upon the theoretical imprints of grand narrative. It would seem that Fanjiang Mingdao is unwilling to mystify his creative works and themes. He can describe his own thinking directly and distinctly. We know that his thinking is not at the core of contemporary political ethics in China. Rather, it is in the name of contemporary art that he explores life-perceptions he gains through inner realization. His spiritual refuge is not a sculpture, not a manufactured article—rather, it is the extension of an autobiographical project.

　　Beginning from 2006, Fanjiang Mingdao has dedicated himself to sculpting the “Rebirth” series. Quite a few scholars and the artist himself point out that the idea of “rebirth” has to do with Nature and with belief in reincarnation. Indeed, this is the case. Among successive contemporary art experiments which Fanjiang engaged in during the 1990s, he made the first steps towards his later cogitations on Nature and urban life. Fanjiang Mingdao is an artist with a richly poetic temperament. His visual language cannot help but show an expansive coloring—even though he often jokes that planting grass seeds is “a lot of fun.” The discussion on urban space and the public domain attracted broad concern as a key topic of contemporary art during the early years of this century. The difference is that Fanjiang Mingdao’s relevant performances were done ten years before that in Taiwan. Without a doubt the sociological and political demands on contemporary art are such that installation, video, performance and even project design became the main expressive modes beginning in the early years of this century in China; at the same time, the narrative and rhetorical power of easel-mounted art were cast into doubt more than ever before. Even though critics have begun to consider and propose a return to easel-mounted art in the past few years, still the genres of installation and project design, as forms of art-forms unfolding in time and space, have been seen as the visual structures most likely to have an impact. This is certainly related to whether or not one has absorbed knowledge and experience about environment and spatial design in one’s formative years. Fanjiang Mingdao’s series of works are all attempts to span the barrier between artwork and the space around it. More than that, they are concerned with relations of enduring coexistence rather than temporary relations of display. One should even say that the soil and surrounding buildings are considered parts of his pieces. Fanjiang Mingdao typically uses stone and wood as materials to commence the making of an artwork. Durable, plain stone as a material is traditionally taken as a symbol of enduringness; stones are closely linked to the “timeless” ritual of burial; thus the art of ancient gravesites is given respectful attention. As for wood, its fragile, easily damaged properties make it fitted for cross-referencing with the “transitory” life-journey of human beings. Viewed in this sense, Fanjiang Mingdao’s “Rebirth Series” actually situates itself within a paradox of conceptions about matter. His intent is to erect a “living” memorial for a tree that has died. Yet although these branches that imitate a tree are painstakingly installed, no change is wrought upon the “already dead” condition: “the timeless and the perishing” still pose an inevitable temporal impasse. Of course Fanjiang Mingdao understands this point, and in a certain sense, the artist himself constitutes yet another morphological variant of “being alive.” In this way the dusty world’s contrast of ornateness versus plain simplicity is posed in yet another form. We must acknowledge that Fanjiang Mingdao to some extent eliminates the expressive element of emotive language on this matter, to the point that we cannot extract tenderness about life’s fate from these pieces. The sliced-up pieces of plywood have been sanded and waxed to give them a smooth cold finish, but this is alienated time-scale of a moment that has passed through birth and death.

　　Fanjiang Mingdao’s artistic conception is a metaphor: The “Rebirth Series” may take on new life due to a surreal force whereby the piece’s “living” branches extend upward. These soft curves harbor a new visual liveliness. The artist discovers a “ruined beauty” in things of life that have been used and discarded. In such things the traces of life’s passing still linger, just as a person’s skin can touch upon the dimension of time. In my view, Fanjiang Mingdao in his spiritual “grain” avails himself of the faith in life which has extended itself for thousands of years within Chinese culture. Even though today we are still discussing the close connection of China’s contemporary art with China’s contemporary politics, and though we frankly admit that contemporary art-making must maintain vigilance and a critical awareness of politics, yet in the past few years we have seen that the intellectual tendency of our contemporary art-making has turned from the masses towards the individual. Symbolization in visual form is giving way to deeper, more inward cognition. Stylistically, Fanjiang Mingdao did not choose a grand material or scale. Instead, from an experience of minute inspection he leads the viewer towards reverie about bio-ethics. Contemporary art’s concepts of value have already gone beyond thematic, formalist language, just as they have gone beyond limitations in visual media. Individual experience is even now reconfiguring a new contemporaneity. The vitality of young contemporary artists can manifest our fantasies and dreams. With inexhaustible energy they pour forth emotions that have the power to stir us. Yet for Fanjiang Mingdao, who has reached the age of “knowing Heaven’s mandate,” to gain realization of life’s meaningful coherence is an abiding, unchanging topic of thought for future lifetimes.

November 2012, Xinyuan-li, Beijing