Shan Fan’s critical reflections upon Chinese classics are visually expressed in pictures such as Filling Emptiness (Leere Füllen). It took him 280 hours of meditative painting to fill in the empty spaces in a reproduction of a classic bamboo painting by Wen Yuke, an artist of the Song dynasty. “For one, this makes it possible to perceive a void as potentially full,” says Shan Fan, “for another, this violation of a taboo cancels out the Chinese tradition of emptiness, in a way that is similar to deconstruction. This means that a void is simultaneously labeled as “the lack of something.” From then on, the goal of bamboo painting is no longer to lose oneself in the brief moment of painting, but rather, to have a contemplative experience of the self. For this reason, Shan Fan extends the act of copying a piece of Chinese calligraphy, by the Qing dynasty painter Fu Shan, to a length of 210 hours, in his Kalligraphing Slowness (Kalligrafie der Langsamkeit) 2009. An overridingly important statement in Shan Fan’s oeuvre is his performance piece, Entropy (2006), which has been captured on film and in photographs. Black ink pours down over the white robe worn by the artist. Clear water follows, turning the black into a light gray. Yet no matter how much water is poured on, the traces of the black ink remain. The meaning of the title is visually represented: every occurrence is ultimately irreversible—everything affects the outcome of the future.

Ulrike Münter
Translation: Allison Plath-Moseley
 
In conjunction with the exhibition, a catalogue containing images of all the works on display will be published by the Galerie Urs Meile, Beijing-Lucerne, 2010.