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July - August 2008 -
CHINA
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Huang Yan is a Beijing-based artist.
 Huang Yan, Chinese Shan-Shui Tatto. Courtesy of Eli Klein Fine Art.
In the early 90s, under the influence of Zen philosophy, I became interested in traditional Chinese imagery. I completed a series of oil paintings titled Short Chinese Language Schoolbook, which was the textbook for primary school in the late Qing dynasty. I used the original colors from the book but updated the subjects. The book is a kind of window into China, and it is the way for poor peasants in China to become educated. In the drawing process, I correlated characteristics of ancient civilian culture and modern culture in China. After 1994, I realized that traditional Chinese thought really reflects the cycle of birth and death. Shan-shui drawing shows the human spirit. Drawing shan-shui is like drawing yourself. It is philosophy in images and it is also literature; drawing one mountain, one stone, one blade of grass, and one tree shows the emotion of literature.
In 1994, I began drawing traditional Chinese shan-shui on faces, hands, and the body, using the human body as a canvas and shan-shui as the medium. Drawing shan-shui on the body is the paramount unification of subject and object, and inspires further understanding of Zen Buddhism. After 1997, I started painting shan-shui on canvas. When I painted directly on the body, the image adopted the curves of the body and the visual result differed greatly from traditional shan-shui drawing. When you take shan-shui drawing directly on to canvas, each line bleeds into the surrounding color. I only focus on small areas to emphasize the grandiloquence of shan-shui. One must look from one side to the other, through the many stories hidden inside shan-shui, through the many layers so that viewing habits are challenged. You have to look at shan-shui step by step to find meaning, as if like a tourist, so that it becomes an incarnation of traditional Chinese Taoist thought.
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