THE IMPRESSION OF BETWEENNESS

I have lost my sensitivity to Betweenness since I moved in the metropolis Beijing. Crowding makes me lose space, hurrying, lose time, noise, lose sound, and voicing, lose language. I hardly have time to take a rest, space to take a breath, and situation to take a tacit thinking. This situation seems to have a change after I accidentally met Mr. Zhang Siyuan and his paintings.

The paintings make me recall my life in the small village in South China when I was a little boy. I remember there was distinct Betweenness between everything: between mountain and river, heaven and earth, day and night, and so on. Everything existed distinctively and freshly.

Then, what is the Betweenness? It seems not easy to get a suitable answer for this question. The Betweenness, for example, between heaven and earth is not heaven, earth, heaven and earth, heaven or earth, or anything else. Betweenness is nothingness which does not present itself but makes every other thing present.

This paradoxical character of Betweenness makes it only present by means of absence. In other words, the presence of Betweenness is just its absence, and vice versa. The paradox of Betweeness means that we cannot capture the Betweenness, directly and for good and all. But Zhang’s paintings really arose my awareness of the Betweenness. How is it possible?

I hardly explain it by myself.

However, since I got my awareness of the Betweenness by only facing the paintings, perhaps the best way for you to get your awareness of the Betweenness is to open this album or to visit New Millennium Art Gallery managed by Mr. Zhang Siyuan.

Dec 18, 2003