Page 60 - Studio International - July/August 1967

1+1=o:

the painting

of Li Yuan-Chia

Paintings, reliefs and moveable
paintings at the Lisson Gallery, 68 Bell St,
London, N.W.1 through July
and August

Guy Brett

On the whole modern Oriental artists have taken
Western abstract art on the level of little more than
a graphic convention, a ready-made style to be
elaborated with varying degrees of 'Oriental'
sensibility. And by doing so they have understood
the roots of even their own art less well than many
modern Western painters. They look as if they
approach both from the outside, and the results
could have been foreseen. Li Yuan-Chia's painting
is the exact opposite of this. It comes from both
East and West and from neither. Nobody could centre; the middle panel had two plugs, one pletely free to compose the points as he wishes.
have foreseen the synthesis of the concrete space of above the other. The points were not lost dramati- Li often titles his work with equations which are
abstract art and the symbolic space of Chinese art cally in the white void, but seemed exactly the right explicitly contradictory in terms of mathematical
that he has made, precisely because it is a personal size to hold it in equilibrium. To see Li painting logic. '1 + 1 = 0' is one written often on the wall of
perception of space and not an intellectual syn- his red right to the edges of the wall behind these his studio. In a child-like way it seems to confront
thesis of styles. luminously-centered panels was an experience. us with our habits of thought and push us through
Li Yuan-Chia's latest works are no more than And they asserted their freedom by their very to something beyond. And in terms of composition
elements of a painting. Magnetized wooden discs closeness to the centre. Soon after he made the first Li's readiness to undo what he has done from one
of different sizes, which are sold in packets. They moveable points. relief to the next has the same effect.
can be placed anywhere : on the walls, the ceiling, It would be wrong to give the impression that Li This 'arbitrariness' of Li's seems to me evidence
the floor. They can form constellations, or they takes his symbolic elements and proceeds from of a marvellous freedom from attitude. He has
can be alone : one is enough. For Li the Point there to be an abstract painter. His ways of thinking accepted his symbolic world partly from tradition,
symbolizes the 'Origin and the End of Creation', cross boundaries that we take for granted in our and it is real to him, whereas we have to search for
and in all his work he uses only four colours, each classifications of visual art. His thinking may our reality and this afflicts us with continual
with an absolute symbolic value. Black = origin appear arbitrary or even contradictory at first, but doubts about appearances. For us, abstract art
and end; red = blood and life; gold = nobility; in fact these contradictions (among our terms) arose out of the destruction of naturalistic art with
white = purity. For him these values are not a seem to me to be a key to his work. a new and freer space. But Li can interpret an
convenient formula but real and precise. The point In some of Li's paintings and reliefs the relation- H-shape with a small disc between the uprights
also represents him, his journey in space, often ships between forms are real and actual and the in one of his paintings as 'the sun among the
solitary. space is communicated visually. It is a space mountains' without sensing a limitation. Simi-
Even when, ten years ago in Taiwan, Li was accented with points of colour which we can feel larly, as the point signifying the 'Origin and End of
painting in a calligraphic style, the Point was physically related to. Then, in another work, he Creation' has a mythical reality for him, it can
already the constantly recurring element in his seems to retain only a sign for the space, though perfectly well be represented, as I saw once in his
work. And he has steadily given it a more and the relationships are concrete in the same way and studio, by an orange pinned to the wall.
more intense spatial role. By 1963, points were no recourse is made to illusionistic devices. There Recently Li has been painting little, but has
appearing as minute punctures scattered informally is a series of small brass reliefs—polished surfaces written many short poems and taken hundreds of
near the centre of long white canvases. Some of the with a few nondescript brass tabs riveted to them— photographs in London. This poem was written
punctures were on small round or square patches, which give little concession to visual space, but as the invitation for a gathering he held at Speakers
or rectangular patches with cut corners, glued to are like poems without words. The little tabs, Corner, which he called 'All and nothing show' :
the canvas and all overpainted white. These though merely rectangular, seem to function as All nature is my work
shadowy points were barely visible. symbols. On other occasions Li emphasises the All my work is nature
By 1965 Li was making wood reliefs simply and character of the surface as a given conceptual field Changing from from
almost regularly divided with raised panels painted like a writing tablet, by making a raised border for to from.
monochromatically with his four colours. Tiny the relief, like a frame painted the same colour as in the night
points of white transform the black rectangles into the field itself. in the afternoon
vast spaces. In the spring of 1966, for his exhibition Equally disconcerting at first is Li's attitude to in the morning
at SIGNALS, Li made a row of five huge white composition. In some reliefs the position of the whole I received
panels occupying the whole of the wall of the points has been the result of prolonged considera- whole I gave away.
biggest room. Here the point was brought near to tion, while in others it is a tiny symbolic deflection `All and nothing' describes the absolute role of his
complete stillness. The four outside panels had from the centre or from symmetry. With his most symbolic point in space and at the same time its
one cylindrical white plug of wood very near the recent works, of course, the spectator is com- mobility.
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