Intensive Vision

moving vision

of a Zen Master Of Ink

of Sight

of Intense sight

that day

must have been a bit more than a month ago

on my lunar birthday 

we travelled all the way to Shek O

after years of absence

the motion on the bus

moved with the inner motion of the heart:

my childhood memory was to be found there

To my surprise

at the feast of Art Basel Hong Kong

we found my childhood memory

caressed on the rice paper

immortalised by a Master: LUI Shou-Kwan

much has been written about this celebrated Zen painting Master

But I was so glad to be able to see his original works for the first time

In a motioned kind of manner

It is as if I was back not on the bus

overlooking Shek O landscape

but upon a journey of our Hong Kong

in the past

in the sixties

when I was still a little girl

playing in the area of Shek O every weekend

and counted every single Villa on Headland Road

in the meantime loving Chinese Calligraphy and the playing of ink taught by my school teachers and an old Chinese calligrapher with a long white beard

David Hockney once said

The Chinese painters of the ancient time

allow us to unfold a seeing which we somehow have forgotten after the invention of the camera 

To see afresh, we always go back to the past

as if to see what we have missed

in Hockney’s case, it was the scroll paintings with multiple perspective that open a new way of understanding how we actually see 

and so this video was made as if I was on board of the bus

going back in time

the landscape scene became the beautiful works of Lui Shou-kwan:

Sometimes a De Kooning glance

Then a Jackson Pollock’s memory

but with a truly meditative vision:

profound , a vision from The outside and from the Inside simultaneously 

Our Master here sees

He sees Nature not from memory or from a strict tradition

he sees intensively

and if it is from memory

it is from inner memory: 

both outward and inward

the glance lingers

and the form appears

spontaneously 

effortlessly

like all Zen artists

we know his breath 

is pure

when the brush touches upon that very moment

of life

seen intensively

lived internally

Thank you for such an intense vision 

A Master I had not been fortunate enough to meet

but fortunate enough to be reminded of your lingered glance

Bernadette 

30/03/2019

(  until 16/05/2019, at Alisan Fine Arts, 1 Lyndhurst Terrace, Central, Hong Kong )

P.S: the video was filmed and put together by Bernadette, the still shots by Antonio Pisapia