Zhang Yu began his experimental ink painting creation in late 1980s. He has since been involved into the experimental ink movement as a major founder and organizer. He resists to follow the way in which most modern ink painter have pursued for a “renaissance of brush and ink.” They believe that the foundation of new cultural value and taste only lay on the revolution in ink technique. Facing the impact of Western modern art, Chinese artists and critics have been talking about the crisis of traditional ink painting since the mid-1980s. The debates about this crisis focus on many issues. Among them, the most prominent is the transformation of the aesthetic and technique of traditional ink painting into contemporary form. Although the answers have been various and even contradictory, the theoretical ground of the debates remains the same. Almost every discussion of the crisis has been carried out with a belief that the only way to make traditional ink painting contemporary is to find a revolutionary bimo, or “brush and ink.” Consequently, this dream has made a bimo myth which has trapped the minds of contemporary ink painters for they have only gazed at the object, that is, a painting’s surface itself, while ignoring any contextual linkage with the artists’ real life and the impact of the surrounding, in particular the environment of globalization.

　　In his experimental ink painting, Zhang Yu always resists to adopt traditional ink and brush technique, in particular the literati self-expression style in the late dynasties and 20th century, although Zhang Yu came from this tradition in his early training. From the point of this tradition, Zhang Yu’s work may lack brush value, because Zhang avoid to attract viewer by leaving any stylish personal brush stroke (cun) on paper. On contrary, he always paints his stroke in similar shape and same size, or simply repeatedly presses his finger on rice paper. The purpose of the repetition is to obtain abstraction and demolishing representation.

　　It has taken Zhang Yu more than ten years to create his Divine Light (lingguang) painting series. He has undermined traditional Literati’s bimo expression from a different approach. For Zhang, there is no bi (brushwork), but only mo (inkwash) in his painting. The ultimate goal of his painting is to construct a symbol, a sign, a mystery image of the primeval chaos and its divine light, rather than to engage a self-expression through the intimate, sensitive brushstroke. The universe his paintings touch and the technique Zhang employs, however, deeply fall into Oriental philosophical sentiment. The universe is the origin of the world and the numberless dots indicates Zhang’s personal experience in configuring the symbol. Therefore, it is a balance as well as a unification between the world he is presenting and the person presenting. His recent Finger Print series (zhiyin xilie), even moves far beyond self-expressionism with the extremity toward anti-brushwork, while the atmosphere of primeval chaos from the Divine Light still remains in this series but with less symbolic touch and compositional end.

　　Zhang Yu began his Finger Print series as early as in 1991. In his early works, however, one may easily find the linkage between this early stage of finger print and later Divine Light series for the similarity in composition. The finger print traces move from margin to center in configuring a symbol of divine light or primeval chaos, which we can frequently find in later Divine Light series. Since 2003, Zhang Yu has completely shifted his interest from Divine Light to Finger Print. The focus of Finger Print series is no longer a symbolic sphere, rather fragments of finger prints, which present certain cultural meaning as well as Zhang’s personal experience.

　　Finger print is a form of contractual confirmation. The unique pattern of finger print is considered materialization of an individual identity. Therefore, it conveys both social relationship and individual life. In his recent Finger Print, Zhang Yu attempts to incorporate these meaning not by composing a two dimensional from, rather through a simple process of pressing his finger patter on paper very randomly. As Zhang Yu wrote in his notes, Finger Print is very much like the incomplete and fragmented records of daily meditation, emphasizing the “meaning” out of the action of making natural trace. Therefore, there is no such thing as compositional principle with any hierarchical form, nor any compositional idea like “wholeness” in Zhang’s Finger Print. It does not lay emphasis on the oppositions of subject and object, and spirit and material, center and margin. The work is not the reflection of the self-thought of the artist or the universal spirit, nor is it a purely physical object. Every finger trace is in transformation without a clear boundary and artwork it self turns into a record of a natural, repetitious, fragmentary process. Therefore, Zhang Yu does not attempt to involve the beholder in either purely “seeing” the work, nor abstractly “thinking” about the work, rather to let the viewer to imagine the moment when each finger is touching on the paper.

　　From what we have illustrated above, we know that Finger Print Series has a close affinity with Zen Buddhism. Finger printing process stipulates that any social meaning lies only in the personal experience, which is the same as the intuitive mysticism of the “meditation.” Often, the theory of Finger Print is in agreement with the life principle of the artist. It advocates a peaceful frame of mind, lack of desire, and aspiring to an almost “trivial” life and tranquil nature. It urges people to avoid boastful and inflammatory tendencies and extravagance, in order to lead a simple life.

　　In fact, Zhang Yu is one of the most important artists from the Chinese “abstract” painting school as what I call Maximalism. It is true that many artists of this school keep themselves away from the mainstream and what is in vogue in current Chinese urban life, and are quietly engaged in their own “labor.”The reason for the name “Maximalism” is that although the works may carry with the appearance of Western abstract art, in particular the Minimalism, their conceptual approach is distinctly dissimilar from that movement. Although, like Minimalism, Chinese Maximalist artists rejected the philosophy of early European abstract art of the 20s and 30s that treats painting as a representational vehicle to present a utopian world by embodying it to different abstract patterns --- the “material utopia”, Chinese Maximalism disagrees with Minimalist philosophy that shut out spiritual meaning and treated painting forms as an object in their own right, as remarked by Stella that “what you see is what you see.” Simply speaking, “Chinese Maximalism” did not reject the elements of subject and spirituality. On the contrary, it emphasized the spiritual experience of the artist in the process of the creation as a self-contemplation outside and beyond the artwork itself. With this philosophical approach, we can get better an understanding not only about Zhang Yu’s artworks, but also the phenomenon of Chinese “abstraction” which deeply involves the issue of Chinese modernity.

作者：Gao,Minglu