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Optimistic Existential Nihilism is A Lovely Garden
Freedom and Traceless
Photograph
In the last article, Nihilism is A Way To Desolate Land, I described my growing background, my understanding of the world, and finally, I changed from a minimalist to a nihilist. Nihilism is a spiritual desert and a spiritual morass, which will make people fall deep into it, and eventually, people may become depressed patients. The changes in my inner state and my cognition to the world always affect my inspiration and expression to artworks. This is why my art concentrations have been changing for a long time because my mind was changing, and my attention to the world was also changing. For a long time, my favourite artists include Mark Rothko, Amedeo Modigliani, and Edvard Munch. Then after a period, I found that many of my favourite artists suffer from depression,
Illusion
Photograph
and their works are kinds of reflection of their hearts. The colours in their works are dim, and I felt melancholy and painful, and these artists ended their lives by suicide. For example, Mark Rothko's works are composed of several dim colours, which gives me a heavy feeling. I can't find any joy in his work. I realized that if kept this status for a long time, it would be a dangerous thing, so I tried hard to look for a new me who was sunny and optimistic. In the beginning, I watched a lot of science fiction movies. I hoped that science fiction movies could take me into a new spiritual world so that I could look at the real world from another perspective; I also like to experience some extreme excitement feeling through roller coasters in amusement parks, so I applied for an annual card. Then I can experience the roller coasters whenever I have time. That is an emotional experience.
In traditional Chinese culture, we have a famous sentence "State outside is based on mind inside." It means that the external world we pay attention to is a true reflection of our inner world. Besides, the famous psychologist Freud said in his "Freud's Classics of Sexology", there is no such thing as a slip of the tongue, all slips of the tongue are the subconscious's expression. I have summarized these two sentences. A person will be attracted by a person or thing similar to him; our behaviour habits and attention are deeply affected by our subconscious mind, which is a dominant part of our mind. In contrast, our consciousness is only a small part of our brain to make decisions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subconscious#:~:text=In%20psychology%2C%20the%20subconscious%20is,not%20currently%20in%20focal%20awareness. When a person wants to change his cognition to the world and society enormously, he needs to pay attention to every little thing around him, because all the things he has done will become part of his memory and subconscious. This is why I like to use colourful marker pens to draw many different lines as my artistic expression on the canvas. For me, every line in my work presents every experience in my past life, just as every word I said, every decision I made. No matter the result, all those experiences and decisions will form a combination that shapes who I am. Similarly, my work is a picture composed of countless lines. Regardless of the colour, direction, length, thickness, virtual reality of these lines, they are all part of the picture, just like my past experiences in my mind. I have kept some of the unsightly lines on the canvas, which means I learned and accepted some unsatisfactory experiences in my past life.
The Invisible Part
(from pinterest)
When I understand that a person's behaviour habits, world outlook and values are dominated by his memory and subconscious, I began to pay attention to my daily life. At the same time, I also learned some psychological knowledge, hoping to know more about the world and turn myself into an optimistic person. There is a lot of psychological knowledge that changed my mindset. For example, the famous psychologist Professor Carol S. Dweck mentioned the growth mindset in her Lifetime Growth. Compared with the fixed mindset, the growth mindset people believe that they have unlimited potential and can make many changes through efforts. (https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/01/29/carol-dweck-mindset/) If someone thinks that he is a certain kind of person, he may have fallen into a fixed mindset. Professor Carol S. Dweck's thoughts gave me the confidence and motivation to make some changes in my life. Another profound sentence for me is that we do not have an objective understanding of the world and things. Our interpretation style is more influential than things themselves because our mind determines our views on things. For example, nihilists and optimistic existential nihilists have two different opinions on the phenomenon of a cup with half of water on the table. The nihilists will admit that there is half of the water in the cup on the table, and then they will probably feel disappointed because there is no fill the water in the cup. Simultaneously, the optimistic existential nihilist will also recognize the half cup of water on the table. Both he and the nihilist can have an objective understanding of things first. The difference is that optimistic existential nihilist will think he has half a glass of water, which is better than an empty glass. Many items are interlinked. Although they appear in different forms and sentences, this process is like mountain climbing. All climbers are climbing toward the top of the mountain, but different climbers can choose different climbing routes. I want to achieve mastery through a comprehensive study of the subject, so I tried my best to think those things are interrelated. For example, Romain Roland once said a sentence in the Biography of Michelangelo, there is only one kind of heroism in the world, which is to still love it after seeing the truth of life. This is a positive psychology knowledge for me. It does not deny my previous unpleasant experiences and my inner pain. On the contrary, my experience and inner pain show that I am a person who dares to face the real world. Similarly, I don't have to deny my previous artistic creations. When I create new works, I can also select some of my earlier works and photos as materials. There is another sentence worth sharing. It is from Tsangyang Gyatso's Ask the Buddha, things turn with the heart, the state is created by the heart, and the troubles are all born from the heart. Whether it's psychology or Buddhism, we can learn from it. The primary influence on our view of things is our heart.
Regarding my thinking about the relationship between subjective and objective, I would like to analyze it again from biological science. During this process, I deeply realized that we live in a subjective world, in which there is no absolute objectivity, only relative objectivity. Let's take humans being as an example. The way of how we perceive the world is through our senses. For instance, we have sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch and so on. But different people have different feelings. For example, some people are colour-blind, so the world they see is only black and white; some people are born deaf, so the sound is an incomprehensible thing for him. Not only people have different perceptions, but also the other species have apparent different perceptions. For example, the sensitivity of a dog's sense of smell is more than a thousand times that of humans so that dogs can smell richer flavours than humans. Owls have more sensitive vision than humans. They can see the scenery at night; for bees, they can see ultraviolet light, and bats can hear ultrasound. We can conclude that there are many things that we cannot perceive, but we cannot deny their existence, we can only imagine them. Just like CD players cannot play DVD format movies, DVD players cannot play Blu-ray movies. I believe that humans' knowledge of the world is just at an early stage. Just as theoretical physicists said, the universe we currently observe only accounts for 5% of the whole universe. The other 95% of the universe is made of dark matter and dark energy. We cannot perceive their existence through science and technology so far. There are still many things in the world worth exploring, whether in the material world or in our spiritual world. The process of exploration means that we need to break through the boundaries of our mindsets frequently. We don't need to be confused by the questions that we cannot answer, or we may fall into the panic of nihilism. From an optimistic existential nihilist perspective, I will admit the existence of phenomena and problems that I cannot understand. Then I will try to look at and think about the issues from a positive perspective. I compare myself to a tree. Although trees have no mindset and know nothing about the world, they still yearning for the sun, and they are growing in the sun. Similarly, we don't need to be confused about why we cannot understand the universe and life and being painful. We can be as confident and yearning for life as trees. I compare people to trees, which helps me unload a lot of psychological burdens.
I want to change myself through the process of learning continuously. I imagined my past experiences and memories like a long film strip, I tried to take out all the film strips hidden deep in my heart, I wiped the dust on their surface, and I took them under the bright sunlight, I recalled the stories in the film strips. At this stage, my artistic creation has changed. On the one hand, my mood has changed; on the other hand, I realized that the colour tones and brushstrokes in the painting are similar to the tones and notes in music because I found some common points between painting and music. My artistic creation began to be influenced by music. My artistic creation began to be influenced by music. There were some noticeable changes in my creation. I no longer like to express my emotions in a minimalist way, and I no longer explore the eternity of my life. On the contrary, I wanted to express my feelings with rich colours and vibrant strokes. This was a new begin, which means that I bid farewell to minimalism and bid farewell to the pursuit of eternal things. I started to walk out of nihilism, tried to embrace the sunshine again, and slowly moved towards being an optimistic existential nihilist. I realized that colour tones and strokes could be used to express emotions, just like when different singers sing the same song, but they use different tones to sing, so the whole feeling will be totally different. For another example, when different people speak the same sentence in different tones and intonations, they will also show completely different feelings to others. I have three representative works during this period. The first is an interdisciplinary collaboration between Leo(pianist) and me. His spontaneous performance inspired my painting. The second piece is a live performance cooperated by Norwegian cellist Sebastian and me. Sebastian played the life of the famous musician Bach on the cello. The performance was divided into six segments. I present each segment to the audience by painting on the canvas. The third piece is an abstract painting. I expressed spring with rich and vibrant strokes. I imagine spring like a beautiful melody and a beautiful garden.
Music in the Sky
Acrylic on the wall
Zeyong Zhang & Leonard
The Whole Life of Bach
A live performance with Sebastián
6 episodes with 6 pieces of works
150cmx100cmx6
Acrylic on canvas
The garden has some special meanings to me. On the one hand, I like plants very much, from which I can think about the relationship between humans and nature; on the other hand, I liken my heart to a garden, which is a kind of cognition in the spiritual world created by me. We often pay attention to and receive information from the outside world due to the current society is undergoing rapid development, but we rarely spend time paying attention to our hearts. Similarly, the owner of the garden also needs to spend time to organize his garden. Otherwise, weeds will appear in the garden. Here I want to introduce a physics concept Entropy that is a scientific concept and a measurable physical property that is most commonly associated with a state of disorder, randomness, or uncertainty. The term and the concept are used in diverse fields, from classical thermodynamics, where it was first recognized, to the microscopic description of nature in statistical physics, and to information theory principles. (From Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy) The characteristic is that the trend of everything in the world will become increasingly chaotic. The opposite is Negative Entropy, which requires us to deliberately pay a certain amount of energy to reduce the Entropy index. For example, if a garden has not been taken care of for a long time, the plants in the garden will grow at will, and finally, give us a feeling of chaos. This is the trend of Entropy. In contrast, if we are willing to clean up the garden, remove the leaves and grass, trims the branches and leaves of the plants, then the garden will show us a sense of order. When we spend time and labour to take care of the garden, the Entropy of the garden will be reduced. We call this process as Negative Entropy. The development of things is a process of increasing towards Entropy, so we need to continue to take care of our garden.
A Group Photo with Sebastián
Photograph
First of all, because of the philosophy of Entropy, I need to take care of my garden regularly. Second, I need to focus on two parts of my garden, including the ground and below ground. Most people only care about what kind of flowers the plants on the ground have, and whether they grow well or not. But I think the invisible part of the ground is more worthy of my attention because the plants' health is directly affected by their roots under the ground. If I cannot guarantee the plants' roots can thrive, then the plants will face apoptosis. The roots of plants and the invisible things under the ground represent the most precious things in our lives, but they are often overlooked by us, such as sunshine and air. When I began to reflect on society's current rapid development and the purpose of my efforts, we all thought it was to live a better life. But the fact is that people are becoming busier and busier nowadays, and more and more people are anxious and depressed; people are more willing to spend time on social media and the Internet, which leads to apathy in the relationship between people; People are rapidly constructing modern buildings in the cities and developing industrializations, but we are also facing severe global climate changes and air and water pollutions. We haven't lived a happy life as we wish because we ignore the most precious things in our life.
When I compare my heart to a garden, I found another benefit because I can further understand the meaning of life by observing the growth of plants in my daily life. In current society, we can see that many people are thinking about life's purpose, which has caused a lot of confusion. Let's change another perspective, maybe we don't necessarily need meaning, just as many things in nature have no sense, but we can define their meanings. For example, a gust of wind, a rain, a leaf and so on. When I was thinking about the meaning of life, I realized that this type of questions always consumes me too much energy. I want to change my thought, so I no longer persistently think about the meaning of life. I start to observe and learn from plants. The existence of plants is to grow, to get much more sunlight. All things bear Yin and embrace Yang derived from a classic Taoist philosophy explaining this phenomenon well. On one occasion, I brought a flowerpot that was originally placed outdoors, and I took it to my room. I found a grass folded its leaves at night due to the low light. Then, I took a table lamp to light it up for an hour at night, and I found that the leaves were unfolding slowly. This is an exciting phenomenon. Many people may think why the grass does not have conscious, but it can control his behaviour. I think the grass is similar to us with an instinct ability. The ability of instinct is an innate talent that is not controlled by consciousness and cannot be explained by science at present. We only need to recognize its existence.
When we think about some issues too much, we will fall into a state of mind called obsession, which leads to pain. We may become obsessed to be in the spiritual world, constantly remembering the past, and suffer depressed; we may also be worried about what will happen in the future, and become anxious;
The Change of A Grass
Photograph
That is just as Lao Tzu said, If you are depressed, you are living in the past. If you are anxious, you are living in the future. If you are at peace, you are living in the present. In contrast, plants' living state is worthy to our study because plants do not cling to the past, nor do they worry about what will happen in the future, so they can live well in the present and then grow enthusiastically. There is an actor's line from Blade Runner. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in the rain. Another famous sentence from Diamond Sutra, All phenomena are like a dream, an illusion, a bubble and a shadow, like dew and lightning. Thus should you meditate upon them. These two sentences have an apparent nihilistic tendency. We cannot feel the meaning of life because everything will be gone eventually. But we can think about it from the perspective of an optimistic existential nihilist. Although everything will disappear eventually, we can focus on the present life and enjoy it because only the present life is absolutely real. Paying attention to the present and enjoying are parts of the reason that makes me change from a nihilist to an optimistic existential nihilist.
Rotten Flowers
150cmx90cm
Oil on canvas
I observed plants in my daily life and watched some BBC documentaries about plants and animals, such as The Private Life of Plants, Kingdom of Plants, Around The World In 80 Gardens, What Plants Talk About, etc. I draw some conclusions that plants are full of yearning for sunlight, and they will even compete for sunlight. Secondly, insects will be attracted by bright flowers that mean bright colours have higher visual energy than dim colours, and people and animals are always attracted by high energy subjects. The relationship between colour and energy inspired me to use painting to explore it further. In the beginning, I created a piece of work, Rotten Flowers. I used a lot of bright and vibrant colours on the canvas. Many people were attracted by it when they saw this work at a distance.
The viewers were curious about my work. It is more attractive than any of my previous works. But when viewers watched the work from a distance to a close place, many of them were disappointed to it, because the shape of the flowers is not concrete and full, but rather eroded, so they felt uncomfortable, even disgusting, some viewers told me that was the most disgusting work he had ever seen; but on the other hand, the viewers felt contradictory because they did not figure out why they were attracted to the work, and discussing the work with others. I draw the conclusion that bright colours attract people and animals because bright and vibrant colours symbolize a vivid vitality. When viewers approach my work, they pay more attention to the flowers' shape and details, so they cannot feel a sense of fresh vitality because the forms of flowers presented viewers a decadent feeling. Rotten Flowers inspired me to think further the relationship between colours and energy, and I would like to explore the relationship through research and present it on the canvas. That is why my current works are colourful rather than black and white.
1/1
Untitled
Short video
There are so many means of colours in my works. I derived the colours from flowers, fireworks, iridescent cloud, and fluorescent lamps. I'm fascinated by those things are colourful, transitory and untouchable. Furthermore, colourful means colourless. For instance, We can see that the water under the fluorescent lamps shows countless colours, but these colours do not belong to the water, because the water's colours are produced by the surrounding environment, that is why I think the essence of water is colourless. Similarly, the iridescent clouds are colourless, because the clouds' colours are produced by the influence of sunlight, so the nature of the cloud is also colourless. Rich colours also have another function to bring us a sense of pleasure. In the next stage, I will further explore the relationship between colour and energy and my thoughts about water. I will develop it further in my works.
A New Series
Marker pens & Acrylic on canvas
90cmx60cmx4
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