 "Water and light", 1996, 85 x 135 cm © Mai Cheng/BONO |
L'homme du bien suprême est comme l'eau
L'eau bénéfique à tout n'est rivale de rien Elle séjourne aux bas-fonds dédaignés de chacun De la Voie elle est toute proche Choisis un bon terrain pour ta demeure
Ne rivalise point: tu seras sans reproche Lao-tzeu |
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500 years before the beginning
of Christian era, the theme "water" was pursued by the Chinese poet Lao-tzeu.
In her exhibition in Oslo this summer, through a combination of words (calligraphy) and pictures,
Mai Cheng Zheng takes these ancient signs and thoughts as her starting point.
I the newspaper Dagbladet for July 1, 1996, the reviewer Harald Flor
notes that Mai Cheng Zheng's paintings "are floating in a totally
different emotional range where they become colored both of the water itself
and of the thoughts of Taoism. Here the value of the water, which
surrounds life, which cleans and quenches one's thirst, which is both transparent
and honest, announces its presence in an abundance of movements on the surface
of each painting. Chinese calligraphy consists of a combination of stokes and lines that give much room for artistic expression and composition. It is a type of abstract art in which matter and content are united and complementing each other: every sign has a clearly defined and specific meaning, its own sound and its own history. At the same time, however, each sign is more universal than any word in any particular language, just as the numbers 1, 2 and 3 are more universal than the words "one", "two" and "three" in different languages at different times and places. The calligraphy which enables a Chinese to "read" a painting by Mai Cheng Zheng, will to a westerner appear as abstract forms and figures. Unlike most of her Chinese colleagues, Mai Cheng Zheng prefers oil painting to ink. Where a traditional, Chinese calligrapher work on rice paper, Mai Cheng Zheng prefers to use a canvas. In this respect she is a European artist. |
