Ding Yi: Cross Galaxy

Ding Yi is well known as a geometric abstract artist who uses the character “+” and grids. These symbols, reminiscent of mathematical formulas, have become an aesthetic label for Ding Yi’s art over the past 30 years.

The reason why Ding Yi employed signs familiar to the public as a medium of expression for painting is that he believes that the symbolism of these signs themselves is much less than that of other materials. And thus, the works produced contain anti-aesthetic intentions to make the audience see “art that is not art-like.” In other words, it is to prevent the revolution of identity in which ordinary objects or materials are transformed into completely different objects of worship by the aesthetic baptism injected by the artist.

His abstract art was born in 1988. The 1980s of Chinese contemporary art was a huge laboratory in which all kinds of avant-garde and experimental art forms emerged, riding the wave of reform and opening-up policies. Witnessing a break with the past and a subversion of values in which newness itself is considered a virtue, Ding Yi distanced himself from the frenzy. He began to search for trivial things that are small, humble, and insignificant, and difficult to be regarded as art materials. He found the symbols “x” and “+”, which are familiar to the public but do not carry specific meaning. These symbols can be seen as a rejection of the expression of value-centeredness and the conventions that claim it. In other words, it is a meaningless alternative to the age of meaning.

Over the past 30 years, his cross aesthetics have sometimes appeared as social signs that allow us to read the progress of history, and as a medium of color and form expressing China’s modernization, industrialization, and urbanization. Ding Yi’s continuing interest in art lies in emphasizing pictoriality rather than the spiritual message or mental sensibility that most abstract paintings imply. The hand-painted symbols cover the entire surface of the large canvas, requiring great precision and skill. The amount of artistic labor is doubled by that much, and since changes in the concept and theme may occur in the process of work, no one can assist in the painterly work.

His paintings intentionally avoid establishing a center. Each corner of the canvas becomes the center. In abstract paintings as well as realistic paintings, the audience’s eye is drawn to the center of the painting according to the concentration of images, colors, and illumination that the artist intends. However, Ding Yi’s painting intentionally distracts the viewer’s habitual orientation to the center or desire to find the center. Instead, it makes the audience find visual elements of interest while studying the canvas. Therefore, the composition does not lead to a center but reifies the periphery, allowing the audience to find their own viewpoints. This is the reason why audiences stay in the exhibition for a relatively long time.

The pictorial liberation provided by Ding Yi’s painting and the message that guarantees and induces the viewer’s selective freedom seem to read the artist’s message, “Do not look for the meaning of the painting, but rather look, feel, and contemplate for yourself.” In this sense, Ding Yi art is a very social message embodying equality.

Ding Yi’s solo exhibition, curated by Yongwoo Lee with curatorial team Feng Jing Fan, Wang Liyin, Xu Zixian, held at the Shenzhen Museum of Contemporary Art and Urban Planning is like a kind of autobiography that shows the entire process of Ding Yi’s art over the past 35 years, from its beginning to the present.

On the occasion of the opening of the exhibition, an international forum was held under the title of “Aesthetic Hybridity in Contemporary Art”. The speakers included Karen Smith (chair), Cui Cancan, Gong Yan, Martin Guinard, Lorenz Helbling, Yongwoo Lee, Carol Yinghua LU, Shao Shu, Shen Qilan, Shen Yubing, Tatehata Akira, Yan Weixin, and Yang Fudong.

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