Zhuan Qingshan

Zhuan Qingshan is an interactive projection piece where you hand-paint with Chinese character strokes, and explore how gestures morph into poetry and abstract landscapes.

When we spend a long time living amidst the skyscrapers of the city, we often yearn to return to the nature. Conversely, after a prolonged stay in the fields, we find ourselves missing the city. I believe this reflects a subconscious desire to find a balance between straight lines and curves. Similarly, after reading many texts and absorbing a lot of information, might we also, at some point, revisit the aesthetic beauty of typography?

Chinese, being the oldest script still in use today, undoubtedly possesses an aesthetic appeal with its combination of horizontal, vertical, and diagonal strokes—lifting and pressing, creating a soft beauty in the balance between hand movements and characters. Moreover, the system of creating Chinese characters embodies another type of beauty, one of rationality and systematic organization. When we no longer focus on the role characters play in language, these beauties reemerge. Thus, this work aims to showcase the new possibilities that arise when Chinese characters are allowed to grow freely as beautiful symbols, detached from linguistic information.

When a poem is no longer just a poem, but a waltz between the hand and strokes, a poem can make us see mountains as mountains, and seas as seas. Thought transforms into form, form transforms back into essence. Here, let's understand Chinese characters in an entirely new way.