I first saw Qiu Zhijie's Copy Orchard Pavilion Preface 1000 Times 邱志杰 书写兰亭序一千遍 at the Inside/Out show organized by the Asia Society. https://www.galerieloft.com/en/gallery/photography/one-thousand-time-copy-of-langtingxu/ It is exhibited as a multtych, each successive piece a stopping point. The final piece is entirely black, with parts of strokes on white at the edge. The carbon particles in the ink glint, so there is a faint record of the last strokes, black on black. Two were made. It is a work and a performance. In China, copying classics was a big part of the curriculum. I have an interest in classical Chinese philosophy and poetry, and the 1000 Times work combines those with my interest in contemporary art.
Some of Zhijie's work is inspired by calligraphy. He has worked on that theme for over 30 years. He has other themes. He continues to work safely in Beijing, while Ai Wei Wei does not.
Zhijie founded the first AI art school in China and is a pioneer in the interdisciplinary work between art and technology, neuroscience, and artificial intelligence.
JSMA has a show of two bodies of Zhijie's work, including photos in which the artist made characters with a light pen in a long exposure.
This afternoon, Chinese art scholars Jane DeBevoise, Johnson Chang, Nancy Lin, and Mia Yinxing Liu, join the artist in person, in a discussion moderated by Anne Rose Kitagawa in little Eugene. It will likely be produced out in a public video on the JSMA YouTube.
In this video, he relates he would not be a good artist without teaching and with out being a good artist he would not be a good father. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Q25LonRJC0.
Join the artist, the panel, and the work in show Twenty-Four Seasons: Critical Temporality and Qiu Zhijie’s Light Writing https://jsma.uoregon.edu/twenty-four-seasons & https://jsma.uoregon.edu/events/exhibition-talk-twenty-four-seasons-critical-temporality-and-qiu-zhijies-light-writing. At the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, University of Oregon, 1430 Johnson Lane, Eugene. 2PM Free
