Sculptural Works by Pan Kai "Objects from the Void" Exhibiting at the Opposite House

TEXT:Sue Wang    DATE: 2014.9.29

Pan Kai, Self-organization, 2012 - the present, Stainless steel, Five pieces, Variable dimensions

Pan Kai, Self-organization, 2012 - the present, Stainless steel, Five pieces, Variable dimensions

Artist's Statement

Over the past few years, tradition and nature have been the constant source for everything I do; although these two systems are independent of each other they are nevertheless interconnected, together forming a more powerful source of energy, leading me to think about my associations with both, about what I can do, and how I should go about doing it.

Later I began to think about the source and discovered the independent value of the line, the line being the most original, as well as the most essential, aspect of visual art. Mankind's earliest drawing and writing began with the line. At the same time, in Chinese traditional painting, lines have been refined over millennia, but in their properties they have never distanced themselves from the depiction of specific images, and this is the destiny of the line in traditional Chinese painting; it is also for this reason that I hope to use the space provided by sculpture to conduct an experiment that will test the independent aesthetic value of the Chinese traditional line itself and its new spatial possibilities. I hope that through such an experiment I will discover and understand the unusual fluctuations and energy that might arise from the abstract combination of lines.

At the same time, I want artistic language to not only be a mode of expression but to be even more an internalized aesthetic experience and cultural position. Based on such an understanding, I want to construct a personal system within which the ontology of artistic language will become an object of expression and, through the logical associations and controls of this ontology of language, I will attain the original meaning of the work itself—my individual understanding and imagining of the world.

It is worth mentioning here that, because the final shape of my work will not settle as a specifically identifiable image, this will make it look not only unreal but also difficult to understand. However there are times when we discover that the things we can visualize might not necessarily be real but that some reality may be concealed within their appearance. This invisible reality is what I call the concealed "objects of the void"; it hints at the void within Chinese culture and the rich variety of things we perceive that have evolved from this void. Just as our lives and the entire universe have come from the void, so they will return to the void. This constant cycle of transmigration fixes on something, and the void without beginning or end is the basis and axis of our world, running through all time and space and defining all we call eternal.

Pan Kai, Understatement, 2014, Stainless steel, Five pieces, Variable dimensions

Pan Kai, Understatement, 2014, Stainless steel, Five pieces, Variable dimensions

About the exhibition

Curator: Brian Wallace

Duration: Sep 27 - Dec 31 2014

Venue: The Opposite House

Tel: 010-65251005

Add: The Opposite House, Ground Floor, 11 Sanlitun Road, Chaoyang, Beijing

Courtesy of the artist and the Red Gate Gallery.