Through his radical deconstruction and reinvention of traditional calligraphic forms, Fung Ming Chip has created more than one hundred unique script styles. The artist first writes with water on a blank sheet of paper; the characters become visible only after he applies a layer of dark ink over it. Where the water has saturated the paper, the ink is only partially absorbed, leaving enigmatic traces of characters that float on the surface of the composition. In this painting, the play of light focuses the viewer’s attention on the images as they ebb and flow in rhythmic pulsating layers of ink, emphasizing the visual experience rather than the meaning of the text. A self-taught calligrapher, Fung is the rare artist who carves his own seals and then uses them in unconventional ways to frame the abstracted calligraphic forms in his paintings. Two of his seals are on view in the adjacent display case, on the “Life of a Scholar.”
with cord and knobs: 105 15/16 × 51 in. (269.1 × 129.5 cm)
image: 71 3/8 × 37 in. (181.3 × 94 cm)
mount: 105 3/16 × 47 3/8 in. (267.2 × 120.3 cm)
Inscribed
大麻之後
麻後的幸福
掙扎扭動
張向空虛空間
交錯狂亂
上下舞成一片
走著走著
越出價值意義之外
踏破禁錮時光的囚籠
邁向夜的盡頭
命的盡頭
一踏足 一轉身
又自覺地沉淪到底
靈魂超脫
得成正果
Post Marijuana
The euphoria that follows marijuana
The twisting and turning
Stretching into empty space
Craziness and chaos intermingling
Mixing good and evil
Moving on and on
Beyond the sense of value
Breaking the shackles of the prisoner’s age of time
Striding towards the edge of the night
The furthest edge of life
Treading, spinning
Consciously sinking to the bottom
Detached from the soul
To become a saint