Glossary:

名词解释：

观象：

无形：

心印：【心印】（佛学术语）禅之本意，不立文字，不依言语，直以心为印，故曰心印。谓之以心传心，以心印心，心心不异。

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先民觀乎天地萬物之象，繪為文，演為字，形諸筆墨，施於甲金簡楮，篆隸真草，融古鑄今，涵泳中西，裁成一相，合乎極簡，化為無形，是為心印！

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"FORM & FORMLESS"《觀象無形》“中西合璧 · 天人合一”, Harmony between the human and nature, and between East and West.

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Chinese Ancestors observed the universal things and signs, and phenomenon of which evolved into creation of the writing or text on Oracle bronze, we called it bonze script, or engraved on bamboo pieces, as well as on bronzeware,  which was called Bronze Script, and bamboo writing, later on, people wrote with brush and ink on paper, after Oracle bronze script and Bronze Script, the Seal script, Clerical script, regular script, and cursive and running scripts were come into use, the process of writing history has been 5000 years, from the beginning of 

pictographically to later abstract idealogical script of Chinese characters, which it is also a process of understanding of human toward nature of merging Chinese philosophy into western real and surreal of consciousness and unconsciousness into its modern minimalism, it is also what we call it FORM and FORMLESS, and this finds a similarities between Chinese and western philosophies. In Taoism, we call it “xinyin“ meaning a kind of epiphany,  heart to heart, heart to mind of Zen understanding without language and words, we, easterners and westerners basically are connected.

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Aesthetically, this performance has mixed both eastern and western ideas in depth of Conscious and Unconscious between Chinese writing and western aesthetics thoughts, and resulting a XINYIN of epiphany in Zen philosophy understandings. 

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How to understand FORM & FORMLESS?

Chinese ancesters made characters by observation and inspiration from nature with their intuition. "FORM refers to visibility, or tangible, meaning 观象 which refers to "observation of nature", literally meaning, observing nature or universe. "From the ancient writing reflecting the realism of nature, and the the vast majority of later invented Chinese characters evolved into abstraction styles, generally, you will see the process of evolution of Chinese characters are like more and more illogical and abstract, from the early characters on bones or shells to the later cursive styles on paper, we can see, in general, is a rational and irrational evolution process were existed, this process of evolution is very interesting, it shows behind the human thinking it envolved the Conscious and Unconscious thinking activities combined with the observation of all things associated with the universe over 5000 years. Th today's program, it seems like it is all about the Chinese calligraphy, in fact, this program is the calligraphy and Western and Eastern art aesthetic fusions, and this is very unique program.

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How to Understand "Calligraphy Meets Western Surrealism and Minimalism"?

From the perspectives of Chinese and Western aesthetics, and comparing today's Western surrealism with Chinese calligraphy, they have great similarities. As we all know, Western famous surrealist artists are: Joan Miró, Salvador Dalí, René François Ghislain Magritte, etc., for instance. One of the core theory of surrealism is illogicalness in the paintings, their artworks highly reflect the artist's subconscious level of the expression of things in their minds. Interestingly, when Chinese ancesters made characters, they also have such a subconscious mind of the process. As "Shuowen Jiezi", one of the oldest Chinese dictionaries in analizing characters mentioned: "When raising up your head, you can view the sky, while overlooking the land when your chin is down, meanwhile, human also see the birds and animals, for the nearest, you see your own body, for the farest, you see all of objects in the universe." "knowing these points and the differences of all things of the universe which inspired human to create writings. This completely shows that the process of writing Chinese characters as non-phonetic characters, like Eroupean writing system, is the same as the process of painting's sources of ideas. You cannot avoid the consciousness and unconsciousness thinking process. This kind of "thinking pattern" connected two world together. The 5000 years of Chinese characters evolved more of the thinking of the abstract and abstract expression, and formated of a huge completely writing system, it is very stunning! The process of non-logical thinking of surrealism is in good agreement with Chinese characters. The evolution of Chinese characters, in addition to a few early hieroglyphics, to the later majority of the characters became a non-logical ones, which, Chinese characters and surrealism is very consistent, from hieroglyphics evolved into cursive style after this surrealist shape more Highlighting, with the passage of time, thousands of years have passed, from the early logic of the words invention, and the later Chinese characters themselves become more non-logical. Therefore, we use the "FORM" of the performance is a metaphor, refers to the Seal Script over 2500 years old, and "FORMLESS" refers to the cursive style which means surrealism, elaborating the evolution of Chinese characters from realism to  surrealist evolution process, the fusion of art. In this way, the unconsciously, and minimalistly, the surrealism and calligraphy are interpreted each other behind the subconscious thinking, It is a very good way for Westerners understanding the calligraphy, it is what Taoism says XIN YIN that is a heart to heart, a heart to mind without words and language.

 

Therefore, the overall idea of ​​our performance tonight is the combination philosiphies of Chinese and Western, calligraphy and Western minimalism, surrealism integration. We call it: "FORM & FORMLESS", so this is Harmony between the human and nature, and between the East and the West.

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