Zhu Qi

　　Zhang Yu is the key person and one of the main founders of the experimental ink and wash of the 1990s. The dispute about the specious practice of forms and concepts of ink and wash never ends, but Zhang Yu is a definite and unwavering practicer all along. His practice makes it possible for the tradition to achieve truly its transition to the contemporary character in terms of language and open up truly the possibility of a language in the theoretical sense.

　　In a sense, Zhang Yu’s experiment of ink and wash may be described as an experiment in a narrow space. He is sandwiched between two high mountains, the one in front being the Chinese literati system, and the one behind, modern Western system. Both of the systems stand alone in terms of concepts and forms of language. Most of the contemporary Chinese artists have chosen the existing language resources of the two systems as the vehicle of self expression, or they have escaped from one system and enter into another fatefully. Zhang Yu’s choice is to get out of the traditional system, but he refuses to enter into another one. He plunges forward on this side, dashes in on that in a narrow space with little room left.

　　The rise of the experimental ink and wash in the 1990s began with such a question: Although we have begun to express indigenous content and self-experience, we are still using Western concepts and forms of art, then is it the requirement of contemporary Chinese art to open up a modern path of language? Quite a number of artists’ groups and individuals thought that there were scarce possibilities of creating new concepts and forms of language of contemporary art and that it was not problematic to borrow the forms of language of another system. The important thing was not what language to use but what to express.

　　The mainstream of contemporary art in the mid to late 1990s, in the main, put aside the latter standpoint, that is, the artists did not discuss the problem of what language to use, and instead, they tried to make use of all the forms of language to represent the changes in the social scene and their own feeling in the late 1990s. It is in such a main current of art that experimental ink and wash rose. Strictly speaking, as a group phenomenon, experimental ink and wash is based on a unanimous choice about the general orientation, that is, we should face squarely the soft spot in language of contemporary Chinese art, and even if we fail to achieve the transformation of language to modernity, we should find at least some possibilities of internal change.

　　Although quite a lot of people are well aware of the importance of the experiments in the native language to contemporary art, there are only a few artists who have clear ideas about them. Zhang Yu is such an artist. He pays equal attention to thinking and practice. In view of his reflections on and elucidation of the language experiments of experimental ink and wash, we may say that he is the most theoretical-minded artist with clear ideas in this group of artists.

　　Experimental ink and wash involves two points. First, it should not be used as a sign. Instead, the practice aiming at the expansion of its own language should be continued with its own elements of language as the starting point. This task which should have been completed in the first half of the 20th century has not been completed yet. Now, half a century later, it still needs to be done, even if it corresponds to making up a missed lesson. Second, after making up the missed lesson, along what possible line will it further develop?

　　Zhang Yu’s experiment on ink and wash began with considerations of the concepts of “modern” and “abstract”. He thinks that it is the open and challenging nature that modern practice of ink and wash may absorb from modern Western art, but this does not mean the transformation of ink and wash to abstract painting. Concerning the conceptual distinction between experimental ink and wash and abstract art, Zhang Yu says, “I care little about the fact that the term ‘abstract’ comes from the West. But I think that it is too simple and too narrow to use it as a description of this new type of ink and wash. The key point is that it is inadequate to denote our experiment on ink and wash today. As a matter of fact, our experiment on ink and wash are much richer and have much more connotations.”

　　In his declaration of experimental ink and wash, more than ten principles of the strict definition and range of experimental ink and wash are presented. They involve schemata, contemporary culture, the East and the West, ideas, etc., but with only two focal points, namely, the opposition of brush-and-ink-centralism and the opposition of the formalist experiment from schemata to schemata. Zhang Yu emphasizes that at the beginning of experimental ink and wash we should know explicitly at least what experimental ink and wash is not although we do not know what it is.

　　The original Divine Light series mainly aims at eliminating the core role of the brush in “brush and ink” by using almost merely ink and other means than brush and ink, the former including shading, rubbing, dyeing and spraying by means of ink, and the latter, collage, making rubbings, paper tearing, etc. Although a basic schema consisting of incomplete circles, broken squares and moving fragments is adopted in the Divine Light series, it is a schema with little variation. The schema is only a vehicle, and variation is embodied mainly by the ways of using ink. What he seeks is, in his own words, “to acquire penetrating effect and heaviness and to bring the properties of ink into full play by … seeking the subtle variations of ink and wash in extremely dark ink color”.

　　In the Divine Light series, Zhang Yu’s experiment centers mainly on a core concept, “the properties of ink”. The importance of brush in the tradition of Chinese painting lies in the fact that it is controlled by the painter, and both brush and ink are applied to convey the ideal of the scholar-painters about the pictorial form of philosophy and aesthetic ambiance. This system has never been truly resisted or overthrown. In the first stage of experimental ink and wash, Zhang Yu tries, through the shift of the center of painting from brush to ink, to make ink depend mainly on the properties of ink as a material and the accidental natural variations arising when the intended images are being produced, such as subtle gradations of the monochromic ink, and indefinite natural shapes.

　　In the shift of emphasis from brush to ink, subtraction in language is adopted. In fact, the painter who uses the brush is made to participate in the process of painting to the minimum limit, and his aesthetic and philosophical disposition, in particular, is kept from infiltrating into the images through the applying of brush. The paper becomes only a place where the accidental effects of water and ink may appear. The abandonment of brush and the approach of giving free reign to water and ink constitute the first step of experiment of ink and wash, that is, “getting out of ink and wash”. This means the turning of literati painting into a painting experiment of pure ink and wash and the elimination of literati character. The experience it expresses is the “complexity, pain, anxiety and uneasiness deep in the heart” in the modern sense.

　　Zhang Yu thinks that “the experiment of experimental ink and wash tries to express truth by infusing ideas into schemata, and that this choice proceeds entirely from the requirements of expression and of establishment of language”. This statement is the guiding idea during the period of the Divine Light series, but a paradoxical kind of self-limitation also exists. From the angle of the concept of ink and wash and the brush and ink system, the images of mountains and waters are changed into basic geometrical images, the control of brush is replaced by the free variations of ink, and eventually literati painting is promoted to the experiment on ink and wash itself.

　　Although Zhang Yu has truly achieved the internal transformation of “getting out of ink and wash” at the practical level, this transformation, on the whole, reflects a modernist idea, that is, the emphasis on the independence of pictorial character, and the elimination of the cultural and times character of the visual, and in such a way, painting is changed into pure painting pertinent only to painting and materials themselves. This, in fact, brings Zhang Yu’s experiment the character of seeking aid from others skillfully: getting out of the traditional system with the aid of the ideas of painting of another system. The Divine Light series marks Zhang Yu’s completion of an experiment with the character of making up a missed lesson, the experiment of the transformation of literati painting to experimental ink and wash as modern painting. In this stage, experimental ink and wash is only the practice of modern painting, but it seems far from the pure practice of something with its own characteristics and the thorough abandonment of the walking stick of modern Western painting.

　　It is in Zhang Yu’s Fingerprints series that the practice of experimental ink and wash is realized in the true sense. After getting out of ink and wash by severing his connection with the original system, Zhang Yu, in this choice, has returned to the purity of his own. He dips his finger in the water and then touches the paper with his wet finger lightly and continuously. Consequently, the paper is densely studded with concave or convex fingerprints thus formed. In this series, Zhang Yu has not only abandoned completely the use of brush, but also prevented experimental ink and wash from belonging to a kind of painting any longer. It is even hard to be counted as art. This is, in a sense, more like a Chan practice with water and paper as media.

　　Except that the effect of the concave or convex traces left on the paper is similar to that of low paper sculptures, the Fingerprints series is, in fact, not painting, and it shows no images in the true sense. It is only traces of “painstaking aesthetic practice”. It is not painting, because it is produced not by “painting” or using brush, but by touching the paper with finger. It is not expression of ideas, because there are no presupposed ideas or impromptu associations. It is not an artistic expression either, because there is nothing to express. It is something like the touch between finger, water, ink and paper with concentrated attention. The strength of the finger is attentively controlled lest the paper be poked through. It is even not a delightful game of modern art. On the contrary, it is a long time overelaborated repetition of a simple action, something like a painstaking aesthetic practice.

　　The Fingerprints series is Zhang Yu’s most thoroughgoing practice of experimental ink and wash. This time he has not adopted the subtraction of language within the original system, but instead, he has tried to reestablish a self game between the body and the media. The core of this act lies not in the practice of the body and the hand, or the changes in the Xuan paper caused by the touch of the wet finger, but in the painter’s attention to such practice and changes in the material in the whole process. The final result is only the material traces of an idea and repeated actions. This surviving evidence of the artist’s mentality has not even representational or expressive significance. It is nothing but the combination of time and water stains. In this series of pure fingerprints, Xuan paper is no longer regarded as the cultural symbol of a genre of painting. It serves no longer as the carrier of calligraphy or painting, but only as the transmitter of fingerprints.

　　What the painter tries to blaze in the Fingerprints series is more the path of “pre-language” than that of language. This pre-language state means, in fact, the “back-to-zero” state to which the artistic tradition of a system is reduced. In such a field where no signs or intentions of language exist, new meanings may be projected to the nearly blank paper from another angle, and thus the paper becomes the carrier of what is signified by the new language. In this ideal, Zhang Yu tries to avoid the conceptual associations and frameworks, and follow the natural touch between the mind and the material which points to the possibility of a new language. This, at least, leads to the returning of experimental ink and wash truly to its own basis, that is, the pure properties.

　　For Zhang Yu, this means in fact that he has got out of the original system and obtained freedom, that is, he has eliminated the influence of the original system on his conceptions and memories in the true sense and blazed a trail for the true establishment of language.

Wangjing, January 12, 2007