Is there Taoist art that communicates the core spirit of Taoism? Artist Zhou Zunde says he "invented" a Taoist style of abstract ink-wash painting to express the philosophy of simplicity, writes Zhou Tao.Artist Zhou Zunde is exhibiting Chinese ink-wash paintings that he calls "Taoist paintings," a style he "invented" in 1972. Zhou is widely exhibited and collected for these simple paintings that may portray a bird with just a sinuous line and two dots.For his first solo exhibition in Shanghai, Zhou has brought 14 ink paintings on rice paper to the Spanish gallery Espacio Versatil on Taikang Road.Zhou was born in 1941 in Anhui Province. At the age of eight, he and his family moved to Hong Kong where he has lived ever since, though he has traveled widely."Buddhism has its core spirit - Zen," says Zhou. "Zen has its own artistic expression that is the Zen painting. Even in Japan, when I visited its temples, Japanese Zen paintings are very popular."So I started thinking that Taoism has not yet its own form of art," he says. "Why not invent one?"And his Taoist paintings are simplicity itself, many like line drawings, some with dashes of color. Some of the black lines are thick and bold, like the shapes of a standing crane, with dashes of red and yellow for crest and feet. Or black links of a chain stretch horizontally across the paper, interrupted by a red sun and praying mantis.So some background on the thought or philosophy of Taoism is helpful - and how it influenced China.The founders of Taoism are recognized as Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu, who lived at around the same time as Aristotle. The Chinese character "Tao" literally means both the mechanism of nature and the morality of human society.According to Lao-tzu, people are supposed to do things according to morality and not against nature. But the content of Taoism gradually evolved and Chuang-tzu's thought seems to have become more influential and popular.Chuang-tzu lived a quasi-hermetic life and turned down several offers from his lord requesting him to be the state's prime minister. He believed that involving oneself in the imperial power struggle is inevitably deadly so he chose to be a "useless" person, although he was highly intelligent.According to this rationale, Chuang-tzu's thoughts can be encapsulated in a seemingly negative expression: "Uselessness is good in some way." And it's often used by people to console themselves when they are in a low mood, saying "I'm smart but I choose to be a 'useless' person."If such an Oriental interpretation seems to be too vague, works by world-renowned masters Mark Rothko or Lucio Fontana may help. They also, coincidentally, go to the extreme of simplicity and even the void.Rothko's paintings are simply two or three blocks of colors, and Fontana's "painting" is simply a slashed canvas since he claimed there's nothing worth painting, so he slashed the canvas.Maybe the difference between the East and West is not that big, is it?The exhibition opens through September 30 (closed on Mondays) at Bldg 1, 210 Taikang Rd,shanghai.