By pressing and touching with the fingers repetitively, the artist has left nothing but fingerprints on the paper. Nothing is expressed. Nothing is conveyed. Just fingerprints left.

　　Zhang’s Fingerprints Series do not represent much, but everything is presented in the fingerprints.

　　All is changed in a twinkling of an eye of time! Everything is said and revealed. Just like thousands of eyes quietly looking at us, countless fingerprints on the paper invite us to make some comments.

　　Nothing is conveyed, nothing is expressed, but everything is told. This paradox has revealed the secret of the fingerprints: as signs, they are only traces of one light touch after another made by a finger, but they have witnessed the mysterious transitions in the world, from absence to presence, from “non-being” to “being”, and vice versa! The dots mark the time and space of the minutest springs of things.

　　Dots left by pressing and touching lightly with fingers do not represent anything. They have told almost nothing but the idea of “ji” in Chinese, which means, “the minutest springs of things”, “opportunity”, time, transformation, or “almost”.

　　The mysterious Chinese character “ji”(几), a sign in Chinese for “opportunity” or slight changes of things with the change of time, might be involved to explain the metaphysical meaning of the fingerprints on Zhang Yu’s works. Zhang’s abstract ink painting embodies the meanings of “ji”, a key word in the Chinese language and thinking in the ancient time.

　　“ji” is present in each fingerprint and between the similar but slightly different fingerprints. Filled with the mysterious “ji”, all the fingerprints magically correspond with each other.

　　When the two 30 meters long paper filled with countless tiny fingerprints come to our eyes, we see not only fingerprints but also a mysterious new world unfolded.

　　In the Book of Changes(yi jing) or in “the Great Treatise “ (yi zhuan), “ji” , or “jiwei”, the minutest springs (of things), is related to the opportunity to change as well as people’s reaction to it:

　　In (all these operations forming) the Yî, there is no thought and no action. It is still and without movement; but, when acted on, it penetrates forthwith to all phenomena and events under the sky. If it were not the most spirit-like thing under the sky, how could it be found doing this? The (operations forming the) Yî are the method by which the sages searched out exhaustively what was deep, and investigated the minutest springs (of things). 'Those operations searched out what was deep:'--therefore they could penetrate to the views of all under the sky. 'They made apparent the minutest springs of (things):'--therefore they could bring to a completion all undertakings under the sky. 'Their action was spirit-like:'--therefore they could make speed without hurry, and reached their destination without travelling.

　　It is by no means easy to make apparent the still and motionless “dao” with “jiwei”. How to search out what is deep, to take opportunities, and to investigate the subtlety of things is the secret of the Chinese traditional arts.

　　Thus, it requires a superior man notice the first sign and act without waiting all day, because “the Master said: Discerning the first signs of a process, is that not spirit work? A superior man does not flatter those above him; and is not overbearing with those below him. Is not this awareness of first signs? The first sign means the slightest movement, the first tiny glimpse of changing fortune.” As a result, “minute indications can be detected and obscurities made clear”.

　　Each and every fingerprint minutely springs into existence. Readable but blurred, independent but lacking, self-asserting as well as self-negating, each dot is under erasure, but each calls for support from another. The fingerprints are just traces, the remains of one after another slight touch. They are so dense, but they might look far from each other. An inner-explosion is imminent, but not yet arrived, with only a voice resounding from within.

　　“Jiwei” asks us to turn and focus our attention to the “birth” of things. The implication of “birth” here is as it in “Dao(Tao) gave birth to one”. Normally, what we can see is the kind of “birth” of things as in “one gave birth to two”. Many comments on the Fingerprint Series are mainly based on the fact that the fingerprints have already been produced, reproduced themselves and become abundant. We understand and explain their “birth” as in “one gave birth to two” and “two gave birth to three”, but not yet reduce to the birth as in “Dao gave birth to one”. The “birth”, the minutest spring of things not only starts from a tiny bit, but also completes instantly. Zhang Yu first tried fingerprint painting in about 1992, but he didn’t get the inspiration to do it again until ten years later. It took him such a long time to get another opportunity, which proves that “jiwei” is so hard to get!

　　We should not only track back the birth of things as in “Dao gave birth to one”, but also reduce the manifestations of “Dao” per se to the primeval chaos (hundun), the root of abstract arts. Otherwise our understanding is confined to the reduction and abstraction of existing images. By reduction or subtraction, the contemporary abstract arts of China, including abstract ink painting or oil painting, haven’t penetrated into the chaos yet. In contrast, the American abstract expressionism and the action painting by Jackson Pollock are both original because they have penetrated with their passion into the primeval chaos, the sound and fury of the American spirit. Thus, Chinese contemporary arts must try to penetrate into their own primeval chaos, although in the Chinese tradition, the dignity of an individual living in chaos is represented in tranquility. That explains the tranquility achieved by way of deep meditation in the experimental ink paintings by Zhang Yu, Liang Quan and Li Huasheng.

　　Thus, we must go back to the moment when “Dao” per se had not yet been revealed, when “Dao gave birth to itself”, when it was emerging from chaos. So we can say that “jiwei” prefigures the touch of the still motionless Dao! The voiceless, quiet fingerprints have not tried to tell us anything, but everything is articulated by the presence of “jiwei” in the painting. The dots are so small in size, but so abundant in number. Thousands of tiny and faint fingerprints have fully covered the rice paper, and formed a picture of subtlety and profundity. They are not monotonously, repetitively reproducing themselves, but echoing the primeval chaos. They display the inner-explosion of chaos! They show the passion of an individual!

　　Nothing is said. Nothing is expressed. Because all the fingerprints tell us is just their “nothingness”, meaninglessness and void. They demand us to attend to the resounding voice of chaos in the painting, an immanent voice of silence! Let’s be quiet and attend to the nuance of things varying from minute to minute!

　　The fingerprints have shown us the minutest springs of things, and the metaphysical nature of their own.

　　The slightly different dots are traces of time. So many dots with minute difference made by repetition time after time, have occupied the space on the surface of the rice paper. The instant springs of things from time to space are caught and trapped in the fingerprints when they are pressed on the paper.

　　As told by Zhang Yu, he has rejected the basic techniques of the traditional Chinese ink painting, but not its spirit. Firstly, he has traced back to the art of printing in traditional Chinese culture. Of course, he hasn’t directly adopted the method of printing, but from it he has learned the unique cultural experiences of “printing” —leaving a sign and a signature --by Chinese people, who value the minute spring of things, the disappeared and the minute. Secondly, Zhang has tried hard to distinguish “the spirit of Chinese arts which is infinite and indeterminable (including the spirit of ink painting)” from “the existing and limited conventional schemes of ink painting”. In his Fingerprint Series, we can find not only the spirit of ink painting but also the Chinese spirit transcending materials like water and ink. We have to return to the moment when the hand touches the brush, the brush touches the water, the water touches the ink and the ink touches the paper. Let us ponder on each link on this chain of touches. From the mind of the artist to the rice paper, each link is open. No conventional scheme is formed about each touch. Zhang has undone the conventions and thus opened up to new methods of painting.

　　First, Zhang has rejected the brush and resorted to his own body after many years’ training of the wrist strength and guidance of xieyi (freehand brushwork in Chinese traditional painting). He no longer displays his skills of painting with the wrist raised, but adopts his own hand, to be exact, his own fingers as brushes! This has greatly strengthened the link between the body and the painting. Traditional Chinese Caoshu (a kind of calligraphy) reduces the skill of calligraphy to the senses of the body, and transcends the world deliberately constructed by xieyi. Moreover, the pleasure of doing traditional Chinese calligraphy comes from the brush when it touches different kinds of silk paper. But Zhang has rejected the medium of brush all together. Although he may have directly got the pleasure from his hand rather than through the brush, he has to exercise more self-restraint, because by repetitively pressing and touching with the fingers, one is likely to get too bored to finish the work. Thus, to create fingerprint paintings, the artist has to be more aware that what he or she has got by pressing and touching with the fingers are just marks of the minutest springs of things, and he or she shouldn’t hasten the work or do it with too much will. This is what traditionally called “becoming distinguished and admirable without laying a single word”. In another word, The Fingerprint Series has magically kept the essence of the traditional Chinese arts--to catch and preserve what is disappearing. With the help of Zen Buddhism, Zhang has found the right moment to express himself in deep contemplation and with self-control. As a kind of minutest spring of things, the switch from brush to fingers marks the departure of Chinese painting from tradition for modernity!

　　Second, Zhang has rejected the mixture of water and ink. The liquidity of water and the purity of ink mean a lot to the traditional Chinese painting. Diluted with different amount of water, ink could present different kinds of dark colors. It is magic to bring about all kinds of possibilities from just a tiny bit of material, the ink, which pioneers the change from Minimalism to Maximalism in the experimental ink painting. However, Zhang has rejected the convention of diluting ink with water. In creating some of the paintings in the Fingerprint Series, he just dipped his fingers into water and then pressed on the rice paper! Setting my eyes his work Fingerprints 2007•7•1(rice paper•water )for the first time, I was so astonished to find that what he had used was not color but water! Zhang has made good use of the rice paper with its blank and void nature. Utilizing minimal materials, just water and paper, he has magnified their unique nature, and left the signature as a unique individual. Thus, everything including the rice paper, water and the fingerprint, has presented itself at the moment of the minutest springs of things. The things are allowed to reveal themselves.

　　Third, Zhang has rejected “ink”. In Chinese traditional painting, ink is not just dark (the color of it is “xuan”) but colorless because people can distinguish different kinds of dark colors in ink. So ink doesn’t have “a” color. It is just a metaphor of color per se, or just a meta-color originated from the primeval chaos and still echoing the noises of the latter! Thus, it is an element of life, a trace of the revealing of thing-in-itself by artistic ways. In addition, the multi-colors of ink are only derived from the original element! So, although sometimes Zhang keeps using the mixture of water and ink to leave faint but delicate fingerprints, and he has achieved the effects of the traditional ink painting with difference in humidity, thickness, even 晕染, he doesn’t mean to display the wonderful representation abilities of ink painting, but to reduce ink painting to fingerprints or the relationship between different circles. Sometimes Zhang doesn’t use ink at all. Perhaps he has realized since ink doesn’t have “a “ color, why should he keep using “the” dark color? Why does he have to use ink? He could just let material present itself. So he chooses plants with different colors to make fingerprints, and his works begin to look startling bright! Red fingerprints fill the whole painting, and so the materials are given the opportunity to fully present themselves.

　　Finally, he has rejected paper per se. Fully covered with color of the plants, the rice paper can’t be seen at all. Just color there. Accordingly, the paper itself has been completely erased and conquered by thousands of fingerprints, the results of the minutest springs of things. Although the material of rice paper is greatly valued by the artist, with so many specks permeated through, it has sunk into oblivion. So, the material of rice paper is both presented and forgotten. In the end, only the fingerprints of the individual are left to highlight the painting. This is an opportunity for the artist as an individual to freely express himself!

　　These fingerprints are Zhang Yu’s special answers to opportunity when it knocks, by which he has established a new “covenant”: not only an agreement between an individual and the society, or between one person and another, but also between an individual with his own life time and with the world per se. With this kind of agreement reached by seizing rare opportunities, an individual is opened up to a new world of life. It is a “covenant” of the world revealed by fingerprints! And the “covenant” of the pleasure of artistic creation!

　　These fingerprints have penetrated into the primeval chaos. What they represent is “nothing”—minimal material, tiny bit of thing, or just a field opened by “nothing”, where an individual can express himself or herself. This is the crucial moment for the development of individuality, and our cultural experience of the time has branded Zhang’s fingerprints. Only by going deep into the chaos of life could we develop new individual spirit, and then vibrate with the spirit of the time. Zhang’s fingerprints are a hidden record of the resounding immanent voice of our time.

　　The fingerprints call for each viewer to make comments. They have provided an opportunity for every individual to freely express himself or herself! It is a call for the singularity to leave their own signatures in the world!

(trans. By Liping)

作者：Xia,Kejun