.png)
orientalist, philosopher, cultural critic
- an article for the catalog of the exhibition "The way to the top of Mount Taishan". 2014
Ascension: this is the key word about man in the East, where man is never something unchangeable with rights given to him once and for all, but becomes himself, humanizes himself to the extent that he surpasses, overcomes himself. Human life in the East is built along a vertical axis and is hierarchical in nature. The man of the East is called to go to Heaven, and the more heavenly there is in him, the more human there is in him. This is the "heavenly humanism" of the East, which is profoundly different from the "earthly humanism" of the West.Tatiana Yan's paintings seem to me to be one of the most convincing evidences of the "heavenly" destiny of man in modern art. I find these evidences in the special piercing gaze of an artist who knows how to discover in things the power of pure materiality, overwhelming and dissolving in its explosive
dynamism is a familiar objective world, but only in order to affirm the enduring qualities of material existence.
An even more reliable evidence of the "heavenly fullness" of life – always only felt and remembered – is the very special inner sphericity of Tatyana Yan's gaze, which gives her paintings the quality of a meditative experience. This is the quality of inner, missing depth, immeasurable distance, which opens to the enlightened consciousness, i.e. consciousness awakened to the presence of the world body. The superimposition of different planes of vision, the displacement of natural images and human writings, the yawning of the abyss of transformations in an instant impression are signs of this universal sphere unfolding on the plane of the picture by the eternal curvature of space
"The one who implements the Great Path is like a blind man walking without a staff," Chinese teachers said. The wise man lives by an incalculable distance, or, if you like, an infinitely small distance of universal (non) convergence, which releases an inexhaustible variety of things, gives everything a space for vital growth, asserts the heavenly fullness of life.
Climbing the holy mountain is the only decent activity in China. The first sage of China, Confucius, was the first to climb Mount Taishan. I also made my way to the top of Taishan more than once and still remember it in every detail: the approach to the gigantic mountain range melting in the evening twilight, the long and monotonous climb up the steps hidden in the darkness, the piercing cold of the peak, sleeping side by side and sitting on a tree like giant birds, pilgrims in army overcoats, their loud cries of joy at the first rays of dawn and the mountain ranges going over the horizon in wisps of fog are an unknown wonderful world opening from the top of the sacred mountain, where earthly paths end and the heavenly world begins.
This moment of opening the infinity of Heaven redeems all the hardships of climbing in the darkness of earthly ignorance. I hope that the visitors of the exhibition will experience this moment of epiphany together with Tatiana Yan, as I experienced it.
Hozzászólások