Tao Calligraphy Exhibition

“Tao Calligraphy is art. Oneness writing. One qi from beginning to end. It is art, and beyond art.” – Dr. and Master Zhi Gang Sha

This exhibition uses the historical intersections of art and spirituality as a point of departure, in order to explore the philosophical, mystical, and disciplined nature of calligraphy. It offers a window onto an overlooked cornerstone of art and an exceptional artist who is contributing to its lineage. Ultimately, the purpose of this exhibition is twofold: it aims to celebrate calligraphy, but it also endeavors to inform; to provide a litany of tools to expand our cultural and spiritual lexicon.

It goes without saying that the form of calligraphy—and, for that matter, Chinese characters—is distinct. Every word has its own character, a “unique symbol…a kind of abstract diagram…[that] must be learned separately through a laborious process of writing and rewriting [each] character till it has been memorized. To read a newspaper requires a knowledge of around 3,000 characters; a well-educated person is familiar with about 5,000 characters; a professor with perhaps 8,000. More than 50,000 characters exist in all, the great majority never to be used.” The beauty of this system is that each word expresses more than just sound and semantics. “Traditional writings about calligraphy suggest that written words play multiple roles: not only does a character denote specific meanings, but its very form should reveal itself to be a moral exemplar, as well as a manifestation of the energy of the human body and the vitality of nature itself.”

Dr. and Master Zhi Gang Sha produces work with a single brushstroke. “The brush becomes an extension of the [artist’s] arm…But the physical gestures produced by the wielding of the brush reveal much more than physical motion; they reveal much about the [artists themselves]: restraint, elegance, strength.” As such, his work is at once simple and perplexingly intricate. Varying degrees of ink, pressure and brush width form a range of contrasts and tonal values that create dimensionality. Sha’s work conveys a skillful choreography as well as freedom of movement, qualities non-objective artists of the post-war period adopted.

Sha created his own unique style of calligraphy. Individual characters are produced in a single stroke, which carry meanings such as virtue, compassion, prosperity, matter, and quiet. There are layers of meaning within each piece of art: not only are there a myriad of meanings for each particular character of Sha’s, but also the meaning evoked through the single brush-stroke Sha applies to the paper’s surface. The fluidity of each single brushstroke adds texture and beauty to the meaning of the calligraphy itself. A softer, ethereal hand would be better suited to convey a concept like “light,” whereas a whimsical, playful and quick stroke would better convey the idea of “luck.” Sha’s style of calligraphy is known as Tao Calligraphy, it integrates Yi Bi Zi one-stroke calligraphy with the philosophical teachings of Tao (qigong, feng shui and tai chi ), resulting in a practice, not unlike meditation or yoga, where a sense of balance, calm and an uncluttered mind are realized.

As an artist, Sha’s work articulates a duality between ink and paper: positive and negative, light and dark, near and far. As spiritual teacher and healer, his compositions convey opposite and complementary forces: yin and yang, duality and non-duality, full and empty, existence and non-existence. His work is an extension of his role as a teacher and healer, a physical representation or imprint of his developed consciousness. It is meant to trigger a cathartic experience in the viewer, perhaps too deep and powerful for words, akin to marveling at the scale of the universe and feeling significant in its vastness.

The work in this exhibition can be appreciated simply for its aesthetic. However, like his historical predecessors, Sha’s calligraphic work encourages observations in which disbelief is suspended. Like his forerunners, his work is two parts of a whole: the continuation of an ancient aesthetic practice and the self-actualization of the calligrapher. “Collective doubt is a key ingredient in our present cultural condition…as a society, we are inclined to doubt the singularity of grand narratives, including spirituality and religion.” But if we can engage with the narratives of non-objective art, many of which were created with the intention of generating spiritual experiences, we are not, as viewers, too far afield in our quest to pierce the essence of the work within this show. Least of all, our exposure to Western abstraction and non-objective art has provided a lens through which this exhibition can be explored, understood, and appreciated.

Because art has become increasingly secular in the last two centuries, “humans now experience religious feelings such as devotion or awe in secular public domains such as museums, rock concerts, sports arenas and shopping malls.” This exhibition offers an opportunity to re-incorporate such sensations into one of their points of origin. Part of the human condition is to reflect upon our relationship with the cosmos and to question our role in it. By creating meditative objects, Sha is in league with other contemporary artists who are increasingly revisiting and revitalizing art’s connection to spirituality, an inquiry with a twenty-five thousand year history. His practice offers the sensitivity to not only generate symbols that reflect our humanity, but to interpret and appreciate their relevance in the past, present, and future.

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Throughout the ages, art has fostered a lasting partnership with spirituality. Before the Enlightenment, the vast majority of art being produced was spiritual in nature, an object or a setting created to reflect the beliefs of the world’s civilizations. Through art, human beings conveyed their systems of belief, gave physical forms to deities, and erected sites for worship.

In the West, art’s connection to spirituality largely dissolved after the Enlightenment. As Europe’s monarchies crumbled, so too did the infrastructures that legitimated and commissioned artists. Burgeoning interests in nature, humanism and the soul supplanted Christian iconography in these early stages of globalization, while a complicated network of dealers, critics and buyers became new patrons for the arts.

The disintegration between art and spirituality remained the norm throughout most of the twentieth century, with the exception of non-objective art. “Some artists who were making completely abstract works were on a quest to see if art could inspire a transcendental state akin to the sublime feeling nature could inspire…[they] hoped viewers would experience a spiritual revelation or at least a deeply meditative feeling while gazing at abstract surfaces or forms.” Certain artists, like Franz Kline, were inspired in this pursuit by Asian art practices, particularly calligraphy, which embodied the spiritual leitmotifs he sought to produce in his own work.

Inter-cultural exchange between East and West was not a new phenomena, the earliest exchanges having taken place on the Silk Road. “Beginning in the late 19th century [however], Asian perspectives were transmitted to American artists through books and articles written and translated by Western scholars and through Asian devotional art, along with more general forms of Asian cultural expression, such as garden design and Japanese prints. Some American artists were inspired by the writings, some by religious teachings and studies.” The contributions the East has made to the West should not be underestimated: Western art, fashion and design have each been touched in their own unique way by Eastern aesthetics.

Notes
Beam, Christopher. “Beyond Ai WeiWei: How China’s Artist’s Handle Politics (Or How to Avoid Them).” TheNewYorker.com. Last modified 27 March 2015. Accessed 17 July 2017. http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/ai-weiwei-problem-political-art-china.

Delbanco, Dawn. “Chinese Calligraphy.” metmuseum.org. Last modified April 2008.
Accessed 17 July 2017. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/chcl/hd_chcl.htm

McDaniel, Craig and Robertson, Jean. Themes of Contemporary Art: Visual Art After
1980. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013.

“The Third Mind: American Artists Contemplate Asia, 1860-1989.” guggenheim.org.
Accessed 18 July 2017. https://www.guggenheim.org/arts-curriculum/resource-unit/the-third-mind-americ