Zhang Yu

Zhang Yu started off as a traditional ink painter of China, but pioneered the challenges of ‘experimental ink paintings' while respecting and succeeding the tradition. Today, he has grown to be an all-round artist who absorbs the latest artistic styles of the contemporary time. He is more spotlighted by the critics than any other contemporary artists of China in terms of the modern success and variation of traditional ink paintings and the modern extension of its boundaries. Zhang has boldly removed the brush (and even the ink, from time to time) amongst the three requirements of traditional Asian paintings: paper, brush, and ink. His work can be classified into the following in terms of style. I look for the topic of criticism within his artistic style.
First, Zhang makes tens of thousands of black or red dots with his fingers on a large-sized piece of paper. His fingers are the tools for making the ink dots and the source of his contents with the fingerprints that symbolize his identity and uniqueness. He prints his fingerprints one by one, and they gather to create a monochromatic abstract painting. The compositions are all-over paintings where there is no separation between the center and the surroundings or the main character and the extras. From which artistic point of view should we interpret and evaluate the act of imprinting one's fingerprints and the outcomes of such act?
Second, Zhang still draws with his fingers, but uses water instead of ink. Bringing the fingers dipped in water onto the canvas requires highly trained concentration and techniques. As the moment when the fingertips meet the paper through water, the energy (living body or spirit) of the fingertips enters the paper (material) and the tension of contraction and release occurs on the surface of paper when the fingertips are quickly pressed or contacted. Therefore, the thin skin of the paper is slightly pushed or attached to the fingertips because of moisture. The dips and swells on the surface of paper create the figurative effects of bas-relief. Also, these finger movements continue to create paper objects without color, or, more accurately, perfectly achromatic. Wouldn't this be the true space of falsity or nothingness? Can Zhang's work be included in the boundary of ink painting? Or is it a type of minimal objects?
Third, Zhang actively develops 2D work into 3D and installation art. If Zhang had settled with paintings trapped in rectangular frames, he would have been known as an ordinary 'Painter.' (Looking back, experimental ink paintings have already marked some pages in art history in case of Korea and Japan along with the boom of Avant-garde calligraphy and the intro-duction of western abstract expressionism in the late 1940s and in the 1950s.) Zhang's work is painting, but extends far beyond the boundaries of painting. His work embraces every artistic keyword of the post-modernist era, including mixture of genres and integration (or combination) of genres. If so, where is Zhang's work positioned in between tradition and modernity?
Fourth, Zhang's work can be expanded to a type of performance using the body. The repetitive act of printing countless fingerprints itself is a form of art inseparable from time. Therefore, Zhang's work is widely open to the possibility of documentary archives, such as photography or video art. There is another astonishing fact. Zhang recently created an innovative methodology to enrich his artistic notion along with the physical act of recording by pointing on clear planes, such as glass, instead of paper. It is his new performance of printing fingerprints in red on clear glass boards. This work overlaps his body (face) and red fingerprints to create a very interesting process of creation and a unique meaning. As the act of printing fingerprints, which is his act of painting, continues, his face on the other side of the glass is concealed (erased). The act of painting erases (hides) the shape of face. The act of erasing the face inside the glass eventually remains as a piece of painting. It expresses the wondrous logic of Yin and Yang or an acerbic logic of irony. This work meets with the landscape beyond the glass board as a unique style of art. It is the methodology of 'borrowing from the landscape.' How far does Zhang's extended form of art stretch?
As many of us know, the contemporary art of China has quickly grown since the mid 1990s, representing Asian art in various international biennales. In the new century, Chinese art has become the leader of Asia, pioneering the world's art market. However, most artists leading China's contemporary art have been oil painters and sculptors following the western styles. Most Chinese artists took pro-western (sometimes as western followers) styles in political pop art, cynical realism, gaudy art, performance, photography, video, etc. As the opening and reformation of Chinese politics and economy could not evade westernization, the globalization of Chinese art would not skip the journey through the western style.
This is exactly why I value the existence of ink painters like Zhang Yu. Zhang's work always faces the massive controversial artistic discourses, such as tradition/modernity, Asia/West, region/world, unique/universal, etc. These topics of debates are very important. This is what underlies the identity and originality of Zhang's work and the concerns of Chinese art or Asian art.

art Your work can be narrowed down to three colors: Black, White, and Red. What is the reason why you limit the use of colors? What do these three colors symbolize?
ZHANG Black is obviously from traditional ink painting, the root of my work. Red is from the social network, such as agreements and promises. It is a kind of 'artificial color.' White is applied to creating embossed surfaces by dipping my fingers in water to make imprints on paper. This kind of work creates various delicate visual effects according to the change of light and the flow of time. I started this work in 2007 and the most critical part is that I use water, the most natural material. I believe that the supreme of art is nature. I express art through natural methods and natural acts.
art Why did you discard brush?
ZHANG I wanted to break my link to painting. My work has converted from 2D painting to 3D relief since I began using my hands to print my fingerprints.
art Your paintings are liberally expanding into installation art beyond painting on rectangular canvas. The installation of rolls is particularly interesting. You lay rolls on the floor or hang them on the wall or ceiling to drape them. They are lying on the floor, standing in the space, or reaching to the sky. Looking back, however, there are other contemporary artists in China who created installations with rolls, like Xu Bing, for example. He was spotlighted with his work, A Book from The Sky/Tianshu/天書. Of course, your work is slightly different from his, in terms of style. Is the style of your installations originated from Chinese tradition? What does it imply?
ZHANG Xu Bing's A Book from The Sky/Tianshu/天書 was intended to create fake characters(爲體) that do not exist in reality. These characters are hung on the ceiling for the viewers to lift their heads to look at it and understand its meaning. I display the prints of my fingerprints created by dipping my fingerprints in water from bottom up or from the ceiling to the floor. By doing so, I made it possible to see both the front and back of the paper. You can see the effect of light that varies according to angle. My work shows the natural perspective that heaven, earth, and people are interrelated. It brings in the ideology of 'Oneness of Heaven and Earth' in Chinese traditional thinking. The way how I exhibit my work is related to Chinese tradition. I believe that Xu Bing was inspired by the sheers around the bed. I was also inspired by windows, but I took it to the other level. I took it off the wall, into the space.
art There are a number of artists in Korea who discard color and brush from the traditional elements of paper, brush, and ink to work with paper only. They are adopting 3D. In this case, they are turning their back on tradition. What are the elements of tradition that remains with your work, if any?
ZHANG My work is different from scratching or punching paper using tools. In case of my fingerprint work, I do not intend to create 3D effect. I do not rely on external tools, but I accept the relationships created by the act of my physical body and water to see the results. The water I use in my work is from certain places. Among them, Lushan, or Mount Lu(魯山) in Shandong is related to Taoism and Longjing of Huangzhou represents teaism.
art If so, is there a difference between water from Lushan and water from Longjing?
ZHANG Water from each region has different characteristics (pH). There is a delicate difference in the speed and shape of how they smear in paper. However, this is not that important. When it comes to appreciating artwork, there are visible things and invisible things.
art In terms of style, your work can be classified into all-over painting among the abstract art of the West.
ZHANG From Kandinsky and Mondrian to Jackson Pollack, we can see the flow from geometric abstract to expressionist abstract. My work could be described as abstract art in visual perspective, but essentially, it is not related to abstract.
art Your world of art is known as 'discipline.' The 1st-generation modernist artists of Korea, such as Park, Seo Bo, describe their work as 'the process of emptying myself.'Also Kim, Tschang Yeul painted only water drops for a long time, and he said that it is his way toward self-purification, similar to how the monks gong their wooden instrument.
ZHANG My artistic creation is 'Self-Cultivation(修行)' and my artworks are the trails or outcomes of my training. This is the term that represents my world of art overall and it includes both time and process. People in the Asian culture have the cultural background of self-cultivation, but people in the West describe my work as abstract painting based on painterly views. However, I removed all painterly elements when I discarded the brush.
art Do you discipline yourself to do art?
ZHANG I do when I perform Tai-chi. This process creates the relief on the surface. My work surpasses abstract art. Simply put, the process and result of my creation are 'self-cultivation.'
art Fingerprints represent the biological DNA and physical identity of each individual. In Asia, fingerprints are an important proof of identification, more so than signatures in the West. Your paintings prove that you are unique. At the same time, the fingerprints that are repeated to fill the entire surface are broadened into a certain sociological message. What is interesting is that the group of fingerprints on the surface is conceptual and abstract at the same time. It is non-conceptual as a whole, but each fingerprint is conceptual. It is an abstract whole created by conceptual entities. The boundary between conceptual and non-conceptual is vague. The act of printing with your fingers can be described as 'physical printing.' ZHANG Yes. Printing your fingerprints could be the primitive form of printing.... The Red series implies the social notion of agreements and promises. Many construction and development processes have begun in the rapid development of China and agreements have become an essential element. There is a flood of agreements and promises, but I question how many of them are actually being kept. I also delivered a social message through Diffused Fingerprint.
art In the end, your work seems to encase both tradition/modernity and East/West. What kinds of issues have you pondered regarding tradition and modernity and what are your signifiers?
ZHANG Since 1985, I have worked on experimental art by accepting western elements, while constantly contemplating how to transcend tradition. I used to do conceptual work until 1993, but it has been non-conceptual work since then. The Fingerprint series was born in 1991. At first, I still had some influence of painting because I had just stopped using the brush. The things changed over time as I began to emphasize repetition, self-cultivation, and imprints. The Fingerprint series has more contemporary tendencies.
art Your past work displays light that are directly depicted on the screen, but your latest work has different interpretation of light. In terms of the relationship between artwork and light, you are bringing in more transparent materials than paper, such as film, glass, and fabric. Since you are adopting various kinds of media, it would be nice to stress the contemporary aspect more.
ZHANG I have created prints on silk, book-shaped work, 3D work, and fingerprints on film or glass windows. The piece of fingerprints on the 18-floor windows displays the actual landscape beyond the windows. I am constantly expanding my expression styles. I show footages and photographs of how I created my pieces during my exhibition as well.

Now, I would like to answer the critical question about Zhang Yu's works, which I raised for myself in the beginning.
First, his works are the paintings 'drawn by the body.' The body is neither an antitheses of the mind nor a material substructure of the mind, but an arena for fierce exchanges of 'a discourse about subjectivity.' In Zhang's work, fingerprint is an important keyword. 'Hand art(指頭畵, Zhitouhua)' created by hands instead of brushes was first attempted by Artist Zhang Zao(張璪) who was active in the Tang Dynasty in the late 8th Century. It is a western material, but pastel drawings are also hand art. 'Hand art' may be characterized by the direct(or physical) production; the burning flame of creation flows relentlessly like the high-tension current from painter's heart and brain to the canvas without any intervention of brush or other tools. In a nutshell, 'Hand art' expresses' a sense of happiness mixing material and body.' However, Zhang's work is a new style of art as he does not simply draw with hands, but he prints his fingerprints. His Fingerprint series surpass painterly expressions. Fingerprints are unique to each person as an innate form of identity. Fingerprints can never be duplicated. Therefore, fingerprints are used as an accredited form of personal identification. Zhang's Fingerprint series is unique to him.
Second, Zhang Yu's works are 'ink works and at the same time, objects.' The Fingerprint series is not just leaving prints(shapes) on paper. It is interesting because it records creative acts. It is abstract as a whole, but each entity of that whole is a symbol pressed by his fingers on the surface of paper. Then, is such a sign off the category of the Asian ink painting? Yes, in terms of forms at least. In terms of contents, however, we may say that his sign inherits the spirit of the ink paintings produced by the brush stroke. Fingerprinting is not a simple repetition of acts. It requires the power of mental concentration for the vitality of energy beyond the level demanded by the ink painting brush technique. Basically, Zhang's works are ink paintings. What is important is the fact that he is developing his ink painting to the dimension beyond the authentic ink painting. I would like to call it 'a formative variation' like chameleon. Indeed, the formative variation in the Asian ink paintings is neither newest nor surprising. The Asians are too familiar with the transformations from the two-dimensional ink paintings to some objects like scroll or book. Contrastingly in the context of the Western fine art, Zhang's works may be interpreted consequently as 'object paintings.'(In fact, he once produced some three-dimensional works.)
Third, Zhang's works are paintings and at the same time sort of performance. When it came to evolve into the body art using artist's body as a tool in 1960s, the performance art had been established as a genre of fine art. We remember the works of such artists as Yves Klein who drew with not brush but body. In the Western history of fine art, the body implies an exit to the liberation from the spirit-centered noble art. However, Zhang's works emphasize, unlike the Western performance, the spirituality. He has long put forward the theme 'self-cultivation.' Self-cultivation is a spiritual catharsism using the meditation. Anyway, there is another reason why I attach some meaning to Zhang's works as potential performance. Above all, performance is a three-dimensional act. This act is very closely related with such recording acts as photography, video and other moving image media. Namely, I would like to emphasize that the possibility of Zhang's works as a high-end genre of art is unlimited in this age of new media. His works are open toward the future.
Fourth, Zhang is not biased toward any direction: tradition/modernity, East/West, localism/globalism. Probably, he is seeking a new dialectic solution crossing the borders freely. His working technique is very monotone and 'closed,' but very 'open' in terms of the method of presentation. The concept of his works is very clearly 'closed,' but their formative extension is widely 'open.' Their Virtue lies not in 'perfection' but in 'progression.' Here is artist's virtue, too.

The end of the 20th century and of the 2nd millennium and this first decade of the 3rd are dominated by the self-contrary tensions of a double movement: globalization and tribalization. On the one hand the technological development and telematics (the integrated use of telecommunications and informatics) tend to unify every type of industrial and artisanal production, the economy as well as culture. A strong interdependence conditions the development of society, placing it under the sign of standardization and also of multiculturalism. A horizontal trend guides the productive forces and attenuates any attempts at differentiation of product and, consequently, of the relevant producer.
The globalization that transforms the world into McWorld (in Benjamin R Barbers ironic term) threatens the character of identity and eliminates the attempt to personalize existence: a structural standardization of the economy determines a structural standardization of behaviour. Here then we find the response, often reactionary and regressive, of tribalization, the resurgence of nationalisms, of fundamentalisms and of the values of the settled lifestyle. Territorial regression inevitably leads to the rule of the law of blood. In response to the macro-event of technological development, man responds with the micro-event of his or her own existence, linked to the resistance of the settled and to the negation of the threatening micro-events of neighbouring individuals.

Telematic Apparatus and Nomadism
The strategy of Zhang Yu is situated in this gap. It affirms the right of his imagination, removed from the logic of this dichotomous extremism of globalization versus tribalization. He adopts the tactic of cultural nomadism in order to remove himself from the perverse consequences of tribal identity. At the same time he lays claim to a production of the symbolic against the commodification of an economy that is now global. Thus he affirms a right to diaspora, to multicultural, transnational and multi-media crossings. He removes himself, then, from any logic of belonging through a basic choice that tends to deny the value of space, habitat and related circumscribed anthropology, in favour of a value of condensed time in the form of the artwork. This artist stoically chooses a cultural nomadism. In this sense the work acquires a utopian value in the etymological sense of the word, that is, the preference for a non-place, a dematerialized elsewhere that requires neither settledness nor definitive occupation.
Zhang Yu, by means of various languages, develops the concept of decomposition, the positive emancipation from a unique choice of form, the affirmation of slippage and spill-over in complex works. Painting, sculpture, photography, video, music, design and architecture intertwine in the production of installations that can exist in any space, but without the risk of total integration.
The nomadism and the stylistic eclecticism that govern the form help the self-affirmation of a progressive decomposition both of the spatial unity of the moment of production and of the temporal unity of the moment of contemplation. The work functions as a mixer that creates interaction between the various languages and dematerializes any traditional aesthetic category. It acts on the public with the alienating force of a reality on the move with the capacity to affirm its own lack of adhesion and consensus.
This character is the natural product of a tradition which runs, in East and West, from the historical avantgardes to the trans-avantgarde, the awareness of an autonomy of art that cannot operate on the principle of identification. Contemporary art makes the most of the overcoming of traditional barriers, to access the speed of pathways that play on the principle of contamination. This principle works against the danger of standardization that is a result of telematic globalization. On the one hand it employs the idea of spill-over and of cultural interaction, and on the other it affirms the entirely individual right of the artist to produce improvised and surprising forms that flow from an imagination free from any hierarchy.
This art works on a further level of decomposition in that it affirms the creative value of the 'I' as opposed to the quantitative value of the 'We.' It presents itself to the viewing of the settled public with the traces of its own movement, the signs of a crossing which render the viewing positively alien in contrast with the familiarity of the televised images that daily invade the domestic space of mass society. Nomadism implies the complexity of multiple references, the memory of numerous plots that sustain the artist, a complexity of a form projected against the spectacular simplification of the bombardment of images from the little television screen.
The ambivalence of the work constitutes the signal of resistance by this artist against the reality that surrounds him, the formalization of the hostility of an art that refuses to perform any informative service. Indeed, he wishes to disrupt the trend of a universe functioning on the basis of the myth of information. Nevertheless, Zhang Yu poses to himself the question of communication, a necessary recognition of the telematic apparatus that controls the world. By this means he absorbs into his work the spurious diversity of differentiated languages, while modeling it outside of any logic of immediate consumption. Communicating necessarily implies the adoption of techniques and materials that are not divorced from the context in which we live. It implies the submission of the formal scheme to a discipline capable of developing a contact with the public. Here then we find art setting itself the problem, after so much isolation: how to avoid the danger of an abstract globalization and the international use of the art system, in favour of a balanced communication remote from any hints of tribal collusion.
Such hints of collusion always imply belonging and the idea of a consumption that, in various art forms, intercepts the search for consensus. The balancing of form guarantees that art does not become a mere utilitarian object, and vouchsafes for it the possibility of preserving a character of passage that signals a journey broken only by short stops. The art of the end of the 20th century and of the new millennium must necessarily affirm the value of nomadism, the destiny of an excellent unstoppable movement, so as to bear witness to its own structural attitude, which is destructuring and self-contrary. Only thus can Zhang Yu demonstrate the credit that he accords time, deep-freezing a better one in works that show in a brilliant and exemplary way his faith in history.

Time and Space as Absence that Traverse
"The Fingerprint is a concept. The Chinese born before the 1960s typically think that it is a form of signing a contract in the old China. The signing of the contract depends on the imprint of the finger on it. Here its importance is emphasized, as is that of human life. Here the contract is a power. Here the fingerprint is a symbol. Here the concept of the fingerprint is a cultural action that has to do with the body. The vision of the fingerprint is the product of thousands of red prints on rice paper. Due to the plasticity of this paper, the force of the finger changes its original structure, on its surface nest-shaped sculptures are born, as well as the natural charm of the light that enters and dissolves the original meaning of the fingerprint, which acquires a visual materiality. Ultimately the fingerprint transcends form and concept." - Zhang Yu
Time and space become dimensions that are traversed horizontally by the sign, the imprint of the finger on the surface, and by its capacity of measuring. The space is two-dimensional, flattened in its lines that match the linear development of the temporal dimension. Here the line undoes the circularity of representation and dissolves any condensation in favour of an uninterrupted permutation that is fully decanted on the surface of the painting. If the painting is a cutting of a more ample space, the time also is a subtraction of a continuum that is experienced and ineluctably postponed from time to time, from painting to painting.
Time is articulated by the rhythm that arises from lines that inscribe it as movement and pause. The movement is provided by the progressive passage. The painting also shows the pause, the void, the gap that occurs between two measures. Thus time is a temporal dimension that simultaneously accommodates past and present, future and transpired event. Between full and void, between sound and silence, between imprint and pause, time inscribes its own grand total, in so far this is the sum of all the fingerprints and all the pauses, and the pause contains a further space that is the space that it creates of the gap, also the mental gap, between one number and the next. Between repetition and difference Zhang Yu entrusts the task of repetition to the pause, and that of difference to the fingerprint, and vice versa, depending on the point of view, spatial or temporal. However, both elements are taken as the unit of measurement, perceptual counterpoints of the invisible passing of time.
Time and space then are mutually positioned in a frontal differentiation: time as virtuality of absence (the pause), and space as contextual presence of flagrance and absence. The pause follows its geometrical recurrence that employs the fingerprint as the sound that prepares the silence. Zhang Yu has seized the profound and dramatic sense of the temporal continuum, with its progression that tends towards the infinite, and as such is beyond the scope of individual existence. The infinite is all that is not measurable through direct experience, it is the present continuously moved forward and postponed in the successiveness of the painting. "The synthesis of time constitutes the present in time. It is not that the present is a dimension of time: the present alone. Rather, synthesis constitutes time as a living present, and the past and the future as dimensions of this present. This synthesis is none the less intratemporal, which means that this present passes. We could no doubt conceive of a perpetual present, a present which is coextensive with time: it would be sufficient to consider contemplation applied to the infinite succession of instants. But such a present is not physically possible: the contraction implied in any contemplation always qualifies an order of repetition according to the elements or cases involved. It necessarily forms a present which may be exhausted and which passes, a present of a certain duration which varies according to the species, the individuals, the organisms and the parts of organisms under consideration." (G. Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, 1994) ①
What is truly always present in Zhang Yu's work is the pause, the gap that separates the fingerprint and allows it to advance toward the future. It is what is never present, in that it is never constant in its own quantity: this becomes the difference that traverses space rather than time. When it begins to move against time, the fingerprint also becomes repetition, as it enters into an irreversible and unstoppable continuum.
In this manner Zhang Yu demonstrates how the procedure of painting is the standardization of an anthropic state that tends toward the infinite, in the sense that the previous painting no longer corresponds to the previous time, but only to the instant of the last fingerprint, followed by the last pause. Zhang Yu confirms the capacity of art to transcend any Confucian convention in the name of Zen/Chan and of Daoism, affirming the value of difference, without moralizings, yet at the same time taking part in the collective flux of history.     Translated by Wen Zai/Archibald McKenzie


① G. Deleuze, Difference and Repetition (1994, translated Paul Patten) pp76~7. In the original: "a synth?se du temps constitue le pr?sent dans le temps. Non pas que le pr?sent soit une dimension du temps. Seul le pr?sent existe. La synth?se constitue le temps comme pr?sent vivant, et le pass? et le futur comme dimensions de ce pr?sent etc, Diff?rence et r?p?ition, Presses universitaires de France, 1985).