Body is the measure of everything
I.
The monumental, freestanding, dark monolith stands proudly in the museum lobby. Looking up at it, the black monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey surfaces in one’s mind. “Creation” makes a civilization, and art is its very beginning. The curling, winding, connecting internal layers and the intricately dense stacking are reminiscent of the complex dialectic between worm holes and galaxies. In an instant, the phrase “the body as a scale to measure the world” becomes substantiated with a real and profound meaning. The artist uses his whole body to unfold and reveal an elaborate cosmic world from a dark void—the genesis lies in art.
II.
Transparent strings lightly and delicately bring together a newborn cloud-white galaxy. When natural light flows through them, the physical theory of the Big Bang is given a more poetic and elegant interpretation. The newly born stars form a white cluster as a winding belt meandering through it implicitly points to the formation of a galaxy—we witness the embodiment of the free and majestic spirit described by the poetic line, “the winding milky way overflows and cascades.” The dynamic, crisscrossing white milky way also reminds us of what the Han calligrapher Tsai Yung stated in his “On the Brush,” “only what partakes the physical forms can be considered calligraphy.”
III.
Along the slowly rising stairway, sunlight flows through the floor-to-ceiling glass windows and floods the space; it is as if one were stepping into a star gate. Matched with the greenery outside the windows, life and the cosmic message quietly spread over the earth along with light travelling across unfathomable distance. The invisible strings in the cosmos constitute the surge of life on the earth, dancing in a wonderful rhythm. Walking up the stairway, the white walls of the corridor and the dark, moving lines on the corridor floor seem to echo the code of life, responding to the cosmic inner sound heard at the very beginning of life.
IV.
The dark-colored formations scatter and spread into a vast settlement with meandering paths, creating an atmosphere informed by the living and life of some ancient communities. The organic form of life and the random yet coordinated space bring to mind the architecture of primitive, powerful civilizations, such as the Great Zimbabwe and Timbuktu. From the cosmos to earth, art leads to the creation and transcendence of life. When art creates, the aesthetic life shows itself as a world made light.