HONG KONG.- I have known Dawei for a decade now. When I first knew him, he was still known as the precocious poet in school. We met again when he first returned from Paris upon finishing his studies in France; we talked about the surprise factors of street art, from him, I always hear new vocabularies. Dawei had a serious attitude, his definitions for various concepts were meticulous; he also likes the nervousness and logic to words, and he grasps minor differences to almost a sensitive degree of poetry writing. Later, his works present the same qualities. A marker pen felt tip defusing through paper, a beginning of an unconscious mistake through negligence, has become a system of an entire creation. “Singular Point” is the point before the big bang of the universe, an existence without shape and form. All matter and energy emerges from this singular point extending into infinity. In all similarities to the singular point before the touch between pen and paper, ready with accumulation of time, space, the flow of kinetic energy, an open system is born.

How to derive a complete system via the limited character of the material from a contingent ink point, is indeed Dong’s specialty. Through thousands of methodic and eliminative attempts by controlling time, temperature and humidity, a puddle of ink eventually transforms into a web weaved by interactively restrictive, colliding, complex but orderly ink dots. Those dots incredibly reek of gentleness and toughness at the same time, displaying a layer of mathematics as well as pictograms with space for imaginations. By exercising the limitations of the medium, Dong invents one set of rules after another. Once a set of rules has been exhausted, he starts the next adventure on paper. There is no repeat in his works but traces of exploration, like linear trajectories generated by arrows. The nature of infinity is endlessness. Dong’s one dot limits the next, indivisible as a dynamic whole. The continuity of the movement is restricted by realistic order. Dong precisely controls every dot to occupy every possible point in both space and time. The space is disassembled into points while the time is standing still. Those dots on paper stop the world and show us a flat globe in reality, as well as an arrow hitting the center of a target.

Dong’s paper painting works catch people’s eyes with tempting sensibility: delightful color scheme, vivid and humid traces with subtle variations. The eyeable appearance covers the conceptual core the artist bestows on. Dong confines himself in restrictive rules, applies basic and unimaginative elements to find freedom in a rigid environment. Like a mathematician derives a formula, he continuously segments and integrates the whole creation system. The artist practices the rate and time of the permeation between pen and paper. Every change of a specific element can diversify both structure and form. An initial point is like a germ and will grow by itself – one is all, all is one. The point is singular and meanwhile extended. Dong’s works do not act on visual sense, neither on artistic experience, but emphasize on building internal rigorous logic and the entire interactions. Tactfully, the sensibility and the tenderness inside the poet infiltrate the harsh rules. Dong puts his logic, calculation and complicated work at the back of the paper. At the front side, it is pure and simple as new snow, insensibly evoking emotions, symbolic images and leading people into an amusing visual world.

“Dust to Dust” relies on its uncontrollable gravity of color to complete the most mysterious aspect. The process of completing the painting is no longer just a presentation of a visual result, but through the descension of the pastel dust, a thorough and evenly remix of color occurs in the air, this process further decomposes and enhances the idea of painting. The body movement during painting is preserved by the layers of color compressed on its own. Dong yet again starts from one single element – the falling dust to achieve two results, the controlled and the uncontrollable; the certainties and the contingencies. Dong discusses the mutual effect of materialistic matter and intentional act during the creation of an artwork, the final results becomes a proof of the process. Prescription of nature and the innate materialistic is the natural aspect while the aspect of automatisms and self-regulation is the cultural. By provoking the different existing characteristic condition of the medium with the artist’s thinking process, the combination of the natural and cultural creates a balanced mid point between two extremities. Dong solidifies an idea of creation, not just a mere expression onto paper, by doing so, the artist create an experiment, a method, a way of thinking.

Born in Shenyang and now based in Beijing, Fu Xiaodong is an independent Chinese curator, artist and critic. In 2004, Fu studied Art History and Theory in China Central Academy of Fine Arts and meanwhile worked as an editor in the magazine Contemporary Art News. In 2006, she was invited to the Art Institute of Peking University as a visiting scholar. Since 2008, she has been the executive chief editor of the magazine Fine Arts Literature. She has curated projects including “Through the Body”, University of Toronto Art Centre, Toronto, Canada and The Armory Show – China Focus Section, PIER 92&94, New York, USA in 2014.