The Flame like Body: On the (Embodied) Paintings of Tang Dixin
Tang Dixin's latest paintings consist of a number of longitudinal works of 2.4 x 1.2 meters. As such compositions are not often seen in Tang's earlier paintings, this means that the artist has to create images on a plane that is in particular, narrower and higher thanusual. As a result, in addition to the intertwined bodies that are found in his earlier paintings, there are more stacked bodies, as well as bodies that have collapsed and flowed after they are stacked and intertwined. The body, from being the subject of action, is now subjected to gravity.
In recent years, the human bodies in Tang's paintings have gradually changed from bodies of performance to bodies of expression. From my perspective, the human limbs in Tang's recent paintings are like petals of solidified flames, weaved together and exerting pressure as they burn, or emitting an invisible and expanding energy, or while entering the end of a burning cycle, slowly forming an accumulative, compressed solid residue.
If (for some people) content is a requirement in painting, let us take a closer look at what Tang Dixin has painted:
Enormous struggling embraces, one after another, whose hunger and thirst are roaring? "The body is like a flame, born of desire."① Several solidified bodies, from flesh to stone, to mountains and valleys, with no boundaries or distinctions between them. " All is icy cold, all is pallid."② As limp as they are pliable, several more bodies touch as they flow and fold into waves; others with their heads bent down or raised, with mouths or eyes widely open or tightly shut like the beams of flames ascending from a blazing wildfire or accidental sparks that burst forth from the logs of a campfire. Then there are the bodies that support one another. Despite teetering, they seemed to have found some type of balance, yet those aching hip, knee and ankle joints appear to have cracks that may break apart in an instant.
I would like to term Tang's latest paintings as the embodied painting. In the traditions of phenomenology, embodiment is the foundation for "being in existence in the world", it is also the foundation for perception, cognition, will, and bodily kinesthetic intelligence, as well as the basis for understanding other living things, and for the coexistence of all human beings and objects in the world. In Tang's two main art practices, his early body performance and his current focus on painting, embodiment remains a continuous and pivotal thread running through them and is also the core of his art practice.
In Tang Dixin'spaintings, embodiment is first reflected in the contents presented on the canvas.With the body and limbs as construction materials, and through spontaneity and fictionality, the artist transforms human existence embedded in the world into symbolic visualimages.
Simultaneously, embodiment is reflected in the artist's process of creating these contents: in each painting, from a blank state to the first stroke of the brush is the creation of a world on canvas, followed by a journey out of chaos, capturing some expressions during the wait, and shaping them into images via painterly language. This period is full of uncertainty, akin to the macro and micro moments in history, occasionally there is stagnation, hesitation, self-denial, sometimes it's heaty and with ease, quick and decisive, in brisk advancement, yet more often than not, it is interleaved by seemingly optimistic or pessimistic scenarios until the painting is complete.
In considering such paintings, I would like to appeal for a kind of embodied viewing: not to only look at the lines, colors, and shapes, the rhythm and structure, but also make attempts to allow ourselves to enterinto the life of the painting, and with an open body to "see" the confluence of fight, reconciliation and realization. Tosee with one's eyes, and to imagine with your body, because in this age of image dominance, it is this type of painting that provides a unique creation and point of view, thatis
transcendentover the flat image.
① The Vimalakirti Sutra.
② Lu Xun, Dead Fire(1925).
