Pi Daojian<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Pi Daojian
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Shen Aiqi can be described as one of the eccentric geniuses of Hubei. A true individualist, he has forged his own path all his life. He is equally at home lustily singing heroic songs as quietly contemplating the mysteries of the human and the natural worlds. But above all, it is painting that is his passion. He has been engaged in the exploration of the painting process since his youth, and in the late 1950s was already a dedicated student of the great Hubei master Xu Song\u2019an. As the decades passed by he immersed himself in the study of the \u2018six canons\u2019 of Chinese art\uff0ccreating a unique body of work grounded on the training he received under his master\u2019s tutelage, yet very uniquely his own. For many years Shen Aiqi rarely showed his paintings to others: it was only after he celebrated his 70th<\/sup>\u00a0birthday that he chose to share his work with the world in a solo exhibition at the Wuhan Museum of Art\u2014an exhibition that caused a true sensation in art circles and beyond. Shen Aiqi\u2019s painting is majestic and vibrant, radiating a unique sense of life-force that is tangible to all who come into contact with it. Within his works are contained organic patterns of nature and energy. The monumental grandeur of his art is the same kind of grandeur (da<\/em>) that the philosopher Mencius described as emerging only when the outer form expresses the vital, radiant spirit within. This is the kind of grandeur that can only arise when the artist merges with sky and earth, mountains and rivers, fusing his life-force with that of nature. For Shen Aiqi, the process of merging with nature and then expressing this oneness through his art is one of the greatest joys of painting. Ultimately, Shen Aiqi\u2019s way of life and his way of art are as one: and this unity is the most critical aspect of his\u00a0shanshui<\/em>\u00a0painting, for it is within this very fusion of life and art that the contemporaneity of his\u00a0shanshui<\/em>\u00a0art is found. For decades Shen Aiqi led a quiet and secluded existence, immersed in the private world of his art and his thoughts. While many would find this solitary life hard to endure, Aiqi\u2019s inner joyfulness has never been diminished by it. Most of us require a certain degree of material comfort in our lives, but Aiqi is not like most people. He is perfectly content with \u2018a single dish of rice, and a single cup of drink\u2019, as Confucius put it: his only real desire is to share the discoveries of his artistic journey with others. Aiqi has always believed that it is crucial for an artist to be independent and self-sufficient, to walk his own path. In the 1980s, when the open-door political and economic reforms were first instituted in China, most people became obsessed with escaping the scarcity they had endured for so long and sought every means possible to improve their material well-being. By contrast, Shen Aiqi\u2019s concerns at this time were focused on the idea that \u2018man and nature are as one\u2019. Although this concept is fundamental to the Chinese philosophical tradition, it has been largely forgotten\u2014and indeed even rejected\u2013 by people today. Shen Aiqi, however, has always held firm to this belief in the unity of man and nature. He recognizes the critical problem that has arisen in our times, when modern civilization has artificially split man and nature apart. Tearing ourselves away from the body of nature, we have performed a fatal vivisection. We have destroyed the ancient unity and made nature into an adversary\u2014a state of affairs that is bringing disaster to our civilization. In the 1990s, Shen Aiqi\u2019s philosophical and artistic journey led him to a new understanding regarding the conceptualization of the cosmic creative source. Aiqi describes this conceptualization as\u00a0tai\u00a0<\/em>\u614b: the unity of energy (nengliang<\/em>\u80fd\u91cf) and the heart-mind (xin<\/em>\u5fc3). This concept of\u00a0tai<\/em>\u00a0expresses Aiqi\u2019s understanding of the world, of nature and the universe.\u00a0 To Aiqi,\u00a0tai\u00a0<\/em>is the mother of the universe, the source of all things. The ancient Chinese philosopher Hui Shi (380-305 BCE) defined the universe as \u2018the great oneness\u2019 of which there is \u2018nothing beyond\u2019: yet Shen Aiqi insists that\u00a0tai<\/em>\u00a0is a force vaster and greater than the universe. The world is full of energy, and this energy is in constant circulation: once a person merges with this cycle of energy, his life takes on authentic meaning. Shen Aiqi\u2019s integration of this philosophical understanding into his daily life explains why the first act he performs in the painting process is to \u2018harness\u00a0qi<\/em>\u2019 (cai qi<\/em>): this action is, in essence, a contemporary manifestation of the Daoist concept of\u00a0yiqiyunhua<\/em>\u2013channeling the world\u2019s energies and concentrating them into oneself, so that they become a source of creative, expressive power. When Aiqi paints, he first gathers into himself the\u00a0qi<\/em>, or energy, of nature, and then externalizes it through the dynamic forms of brushwork\u2013dots, lines, ink rhythm, ink \u2018breath\u2019; through this visual externalization, he constructs a world. The painter Zao Wou-ki (1920-2013) once said that \u2018A good painting breathes\u2019. This is the case with all Aiqi\u2019s work: whether he is using splashed-ink (pomo<\/em>) or some other method, every form he paints is infused with breath. This sense of \u2018breathing\u2019 implicit in his work probably derives from Aiqi\u2019s creative methodology of \u2018harnessing\u00a0qi<\/em>\u2019, a methodology that arises organically from his very way of life, as he lives and breathes in harmony with nature. To me, Aiqi\u2019s creative methodology can be summed up as the \u2018transmutation of\u00a0qi<\/em>\u00a0into form\u2019, which follows a direct trajectory from the most ancient and elemental concept of Chinese art\u2014the idea of \u2018breath-resonance\u2019 (qiyun<\/em>). Within this concept of breath-resonance is contained the idea that painting is infused with and animated by the same kind of life-force that animates humans, and indeed all living beings. The overarching goal of Shen Aiqi\u2019s contemporary\u00a0shanshui<\/em>\u00a0painting is nothing less than the physical\/visual expression of this living, breathing presence. Watching Aiqi paint, one might feel that his is a completely unrestrained, almost cathartic process, but in fact it is far more than this. For Aiqi, painting is a vital necessity of his inner, energetic life-force as well as of his daily life: it is the way he expresses his being-ness in the world. Yet at the same time, he also wants to use his art to shake people up\u2014to awaken them\u2013by giving them a kind of powerful visual shock. His painting at first glance seems abstract and formless, but in fact it has both pattern and form that extend beyond the painting surface itself. This pattern and form come into being through the artist\u2019s complete energetic investment in the act of painting, through the rhythm and \u2018breathing\u2019 of the ink forms; and, ultimately, they manifest through in their emergence in our minds and hearts. Aiqi is both deeply imaginative and keenly observant. His scope of investigation is broad, and he has made a special study of the body\u2019s meridians (or energy channels) as defined in traditional Chinese medicine, discovering in the process that the meridians and arteries of the human body are closely aligned with those of nature\u2019s \u2018body\u2019. In Aiqi\u2019s view, the mountains also have a beating heart at their centre, and so in his paintings he creates many radiating meridians, constructed of ink lines and ink dots which are in essence the physical\/visual vehicles by which he harnesses, or perhaps responds to, the energy channels of the world. But whether a harnessing or a response, his creative methodology can always be defined as the transmutation of qi<\/em> into form.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Aiqi\u2019s use of the traditional brush-methods of Chinese calligraphy to create visual constructions whose vibrant aliveness shocks and stimulates the viewer is the most critical aspect of his\u00a0shanshui<\/em>\u00a0painting. The Qing-dynasty artist Fang Shishu (1692-1751) wrote that \u2018The world is created through the heart-mind, and the hand brings the realm of the heart-mind into form; this is the realm of emptiness. To manifest the void in solid form is the essence of brushwork. This is why, through their brushwork, the ancients were able to materialize the pure colours of the mountains and the elegant shapeliness of the trees, the lively tumult of the waters and the glistening skin of the rocks, creating a realm of spiritual, energetic vitality existing beyond the physical boundaries of sky and earth.\u2019[1]<\/a> Since the Yuan period, China\u2019s greatest artists have used the shanshui<\/em>\u00a0form as a vehicle to express the vitality of their brushwork, and have used brushwork to express the innermost realms of their minds and hearts. Shen Aiqi is a faithful follower of this heritage. In formal and structural terms his brushwork fully realizes the bold and unconstrained style of his teacher Xu Song\u2019an; yet at the same time from these elements he has woven his own uniquely expressive mode. The myriad forms and transformations of Aiqi\u2019s paintings twist and turn like withered vines; come crashing down like falling mountain rocks; splinter and crackle like the biting autumn wind; or float as lightly as the moist spring rain. His work stimulates and enchants, and at the same time it is permeated with an energy and vitality specific to our age. This is why Aiqi\u2019s art both captivates and challenges the modern aesthetic perception, and yet goes even further to stimulate a kind of soul-searching in the wake of the encounter. It is through this kind of impact that Shen Aiqi can be said to have broken new artistic ground and opened up a new expressive sensibility and conceptual dimension that further validates the importance of Chinese painting in a contemporary context. Ultimately, what Shen Aiqi seeks is to share both his artistic discoveries and philosophical his thinking with others. This is why he eventually moved out of his studio to paint in the open air, between earth and sky, utilizing his unique methodology to create these huge, masterful paintings through which he seeks to knock on the door of our hearts and minds. From my understanding, Aiqi\u2019s method of painting out in the open air is an extension of the concept of \u2018harnessing\u00a0qi<\/em>\u2019 that he first began to work with 30 years ago. He has always believed that man and nature should not be in opposition, that they are in fact not binaries, but are as one. His working method infuses his paintings with a strong sense of performance, setting his art apart from that of his\u00a0shanshui<\/em>\u00a0forbears. But this element of performance is also quite different from that of modern Western \u2018action painting\u2019. This is not only because Aiqi paints out in the open air, in the midst of nature. The key issue is that Aiqi\u2019s paintings are the direct expression of his emotional and spiritual state in the moment\uff1band by extension, they also channel, through the actions and methodology of the individual artist, the response of traditional Chinese culture in confrontation with the age of economic and technical globalization on the one hand and the existential state of modern Chinese society on the other. His works are materialisations of Chinese philosophical thought, of traditional views on nature, and on the relationship between man and the universe. In this sense, Shen Aiqi\u2019s\u00a0shanshui<\/em>\u00a0painting can be considered as a form of Chinese contemporary art.
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