The Body of Mountains and Waters
Dr. Gao Shiyu
The Order of Body: Aquatic Animals—it's hard to tell whether you are observing the artwork or the artwork is observing you. This look holds neither the desire to gaze nor the impulse to judge, but rather a silence, akin to compassion, a witnessing emerging from time eternal. The silk canvas exhibits an amber-like texture. Amber is time consolidated; observing amber resembles traversing a spacetime tunnel to behold frozen eternity. Chen Duxi's works function as amber of the imagery, not merely representing time but preserving the stratigraphic imprints of time.Time is the true subject of his paintings.The European still-life tradition used rotting fruits and withered flowers to signify vanitas, life's transience, while Chinese flower-and-bird painting reveals cosmic cycles through blooming, withering, and rebloom. As a fundamental genre of traditional Chinese painting, flower-and-bird works often exist outside either the Neo-Confucian framework of "preserving social ethics and enlightening society" or the literati's "expressive conception" tradition. In Chen Duxi's brush, humans and beasts hold equal standing, while each flower, bird, insect, and grass manifests its own cosmos, representing a visual reconstruction of relationships between humanity and the world, nature and time.This mode of viewing is a form of Dao, a practice, and a path to re-examining the relationship between body and the material world. It generates a sense of respiration within the imagery, transforming the viewer from a detached witness into an organic participant resonating with qi currents and brushstrokes. Such viewing transcends mere aesthetics or judgment, becoming a training in perceptual ethics: maintaining composure within uncertain visual structures and sustaining an open mind toward unnameable imagery.Chen Duxi's paintings are both images and contemplative acts; both formal expressions and spiritual cultivation. His work inherits the deep logic of viewing traditions from Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism: in Confucianism, it manifests as self-reflection and moral cultivation of the physical self; in Buddhism, as meditative methods like "contemplating the Five Aggregates" and "observing the impurity of life"; in Daoism, as visual dissolution aligning with qi currents and transcending form to return to Dao. Chen does not replicate these traditions but transforms and reorganizes their viewing ethos, reposing the question of "how to view" within contemporary visual contexts.His *Contemplate* series directly responds to this inquiry. Zhuangzi's *The Fisherman* states: "The left hand rests on the knee, the right hand holds the chin to listen." In these works, brushstrokes transcend their role as mere image-depicting tools to become structures of time itself. These endlessly extending lines — sometimes flowing like water veins, sometimes spiraling like fingerprints — neither adhere to concrete forms nor pursue figural completeness, but slowly expand across silk scrolls, like mountain ridges disappearing into clouds, or qi flowing through the body. Viewing *Contemplate* becomes observing bodily processes, tracking line rhythms and witnessing the forming of perceptions.Water forms the hidden pillar in Chen Duxi's visual language. Growing up in watery Sichuan, rivers flow through his bodily experience. He recalled that during 2013 sketching at Dujiangyan, forced by unavailable oil paints to adopt Xuan paper and outlining brushes, he entered the realm of silk scrolls and ink-wash — stepping onto Chinese painting's spiritual path. In this tradition, water never merely depicts nature but embodies philosophy. As *Tao Te Ching* states: “Supreme good is like water”, which benefits all without contention, its suppleness, flux and impermanence materialize Dao. Water's rhythm pulses through *Contemplate* series works: no established center, no constructed framework, but sustained, ceaseless and silent generation.In Chen Duxi's *Contemplate* series, the logic of water formed by lines immerses viewers in a non-narrative visual experience, as if sitting by water, with gaze and emotions swaying along ripples and water flows. This evokes Ma Yuan's *Water Paintings* and Hiroshi Sugimoto's *Seascapes*, both posing eternal inquiries into time akin to Confucius' "thus do things flow away like this".This visual experience also recalls the tradition of Phenological Diagrams in Song Dynasty image culture. Phenology refers to a visual language documenting the rhythms of natural, seasonal growth and temporal shifts—not a representation of "things" but a grasp of "seasonality": the seasons when flowers bloom, birds sing, or dew falls. Chen's compositions similarly form an image-time system: between each brushstroke, time is "written" into the painting like air currents, rather than "delineated" upon forms.This temporal structure of imagery is particularly pronounced in *The Order of Body* series. The title derives from *The Analects·Yao Yue*: "Heaven's ordained sequence resides in your very person", originally signifying the cultivation and introspection of the self. By adopting this title, Chen transforms viewing into contemplation and painting's ontology into embodied practice. He portrays not the body itself, but its generative structure, the traces and transformations imprinted on the body by natural forces.In works such as *Peruvian Snail* and *Calla Lily Plant*, the spiral, folded, cross-sectional, and translucent structures — which resemble both internal organs and seashells, plant rhizomes and mountain profiles — blur boundaries between living and non-living entities, natural and artificial forms, bodily and landscape elements. The images no longer serve as representation of identifiable objects, but manifest as generative visual entities that are continuously deforming, receding, and growing.The concept of Contemplating Existence in Buddhist tradition refers not to physiological being, but to contemplating the impermanence and illusory nature of the material body. From the Nine Perceptions Contemplation to contemplating the Five Aggregates, these meditation practices aim to dissolve attachment to the body as a permanent entity, enabling practitioners to realize "non-self” and "emptiness" through bodily transformations. Chen Duxi's paintings visually articulate this philosophy: his bodily images perpetually oscillate between generation and disintegration, as if eternally suspended in the flowing vital energy.In my work *Body Landscape: The Body in Chinese Contemporary Art*, I proposed the concept of "the body as landscape”. Taoist images such as *Inner Landscape Diagram* and *Cultivation Diagram* do not depict surgically dissected bodies but rather present a circulation structure of vital energy, serving as visual allegories for the unity of body-mind and harmony between heaven and humanity. The body becomes a microcosm of mountains and rivers, a vessel containing cosmic rhythms. Thus, the purpose of images is not to anatomize the body but to guide self-cultivation. As art historian Shih Shou-chien noted, the core of ancient Chinese images lies in the "order of knowledge constructed through images"—they serve not mimicking reality but understanding. Chen Duxi's works reactivate this contemporary iteration of an image system that is "observable yet inexhaustibly ineffable”.In contrast, Western medical imagery is rooted in a knowledge regime that divides the subject from the object: X-rays, MRIs, CT scans and similar forms treat the body as a source code, to be dissected, quantified, and categorized layer by layer. Jonathan Crary argued that modern visuality constitutes "techniques of the observer"—where seeing is no longer natural experience but an institutionalized instrument of control. Chen Duxi's pictorial practice resists entering this visually governed knowledge apparatus. His paintings are not objects "for viewing" but images that construct new forms of corporeality. The viewer's body must physically engage to truly "see" these works.This is precisely the resistant significance of Chen Duxi's works within the context of contemporary politics of images. The bodies he paints are not objects to be encoded, archived, or controlled, but existences as landscape, as rhythm, as vital energy state—the "unfinished body”. Chen Duxi's practice responds to my proposed concept of "body-as-landscape": the perspective on the body is the perspective on nature, the perspective on the cosmos. In Chen Duxi's paintings, the body is not an individual, but a being that resonates with mountains, rivers, plants, seasonal nodes, airflow, and images.Thus, his images are not answers, but exercises. To view these works is to enter an unnamable valley, surrounded by undefined structures, undulating lines, and unfinished vital energy. You are no longer a spectator, but a participant within that breath.These paintings are not merely visible objects, but cohabitable energy fields; not mere representations of bodies, but training of perception. Through them, what we cultivate and seek is not just observing images, but a renewed "viewing" of others, nature and the self.In this way, painting again becomes a method to approach the Dao.
————————————————————
山水之身
高士淯 博士现任职英国伯明翰城市大学艺术设计学院和当代视觉研究中心,同时,高士淯博士已获得英国利华休姆学术新秀奖(Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship),自2024年1月起,她将加入CCVA,开始为期三年的博士后研究。这是继劳伦·沃尔登博士(Dr. Lauren Walden)和孟德丽博士(Dr Federica Mirra)之后,CCVA第三次迎来利华休姆学术新秀奖研究员。高博士的研究将以科技带来的极端监控为线索重新审视艺术家的主权和当代艺术在新技术变革和人类中心论逐渐暴露危机的数字时代的新角色。# 作品评论正文
身体之序:水族
我被画中眼睛深深吸引,很难说是你在观看画作,还是画作在观看你。那种注视不是凝视的欲望,也不是评判的眼光,而是一种近乎怜悯的静默,是来自永恒时间的观看。绢本呈现出近似琥珀的质感。琥珀是凝结的时间,看琥珀就像穿越一个时空的隧道,凝视一段被冻结的永恒。陈督兮的作品如同图像的琥珀,不是再现时间,而是收纳时间的层理痕迹。时间,是他绘画的真正对象。欧洲静物画传统曾以腐烂的果实与枯萎的花朵暗示生命的无常(虚空画),而中国花鸟画,则以盛开、枯败、再生的节律呈现天地往复。作为中国传统绘画的基本品类之一,花鸟画常游离于理学框架下“存人伦、明教化”与文人“尚意”传统之外。在陈督兮笔下,人与走兽并无高下之分,花、鸟、虫、草各自自成宇宙,以一种图像方式重构人与世界、人与自然、人与时间的关系。这种观看方式是一种“道”,一种实践,也是一种重新审视身体与物质世界关系的路径。它在图像中生成一种呼吸感,让观看者不再是置身事外的目击者,而成为气流与笔触共振的有机部分。这种观看,不止于审美或判断,而是一种感知伦理的训练:在不确定的视觉结构中保持沉静,在无法命名的图像中维持开放。陈督兮的绘画既是图像,也是观照;既是形式,也是修行。他的画延续了儒释道三家观看传统的深层逻辑:在儒家,这是对“自身”的自省与修身;在佛教,这是“观五蕴”、“观生不净”的修观法门;在道家,则是顺应气流、去形归道的视觉消融。陈督兮并不复刻这些传统,而是将其观看精神加以变形与重组,在当代图像语境中重新提出“如何看”的问题。他的《持颐》系列就是对这一问题的直接回应。《庄子·渔父》:“左手据膝,右手持颐以听。”在这组作品中,笔触不再只是描绘图像的工具,而成为时间自身的结构。那些不断延展、似乎永不止息的线条——时而流动如水脉,时而盘旋如指纹——既不依附于具象的身体,也不追求形象的完整,而是在绢本上缓缓铺展,如山脊隐入云层,又如气息在身体中游走。观《持颐》,即是观身体的运化、观线条的节奏、观感知的生成。水,是陈督兮艺术语言中隐秘的精神支柱。成长于水系纵横的四川,河流早已内化为他的身体经验。他曾回忆,2013年在都江堰写生时,因当地无法购得油彩,转而使用宣纸与勾线笔,自此步入绢本水墨的创作脉络,踏上中国绘画的精神路径。在中国艺术传统里,水从来不是单纯的自然物象,而是哲学的具象化身。正如《道德经》所言:“上善若水”,水利万物而不争,其柔韧、流动、居无定所的特质,正是“道”的物化显现。水的节奏,亦是《持颐》作品的内在节律:不设中心,不构范式,只以持续、不绝、静默的方式自在生成。在陈督兮的《持颐》系列中,线条所构筑的水之逻辑,带领观者进入一场非叙事性的图像体验,宛若临水静坐,视线随涟漪游走,心绪随流水安放。这让人联想到马远《水图》与杉本博司《海景》,皆如夫子“逝者如斯夫”之叹,向永恒时间发出叩问。这种视觉经验亦关联宋代图像文化中的“物候图”传统。所谓物候,是记录自然生长节律与时序变迁的视觉语言,它不执着于对“物象”的复刻,而重在把握“时序”:花开之时、鸟鸣之刻、露降之节。陈督兮的画面同样构建起一套图像—时间系统:每一笔之间,时间都如气流般被“写”入画面,而非生硬描摹在形体表层。这种图像时间结构在《尔躬》系列中尤为突出。“尔躬”语出《论语·尧曰》:“咨尔舜!天之历数在尔躬”,本意指向个体自身的修持与内观。陈督兮以此命名,将观看升华为观照,将绘画创作转化为修身实践。他描绘的并非肉体本身,而是身体的生成结构,是自然万物在身体上留下的痕迹与形变。在《秘鲁蜗牛》《马蹄莲》等作品中,螺旋、褶皱、切面、通透的肌理——似内脏,亦如贝壳;像植物根茎,又如山体剖面——模糊了生物与非生物、自然与人工、身体与风景的边界。图像不再是可辨识物象的简单复刻,而是一种具有生成性的视觉生命体,始终在形变、隐退与生长之间流转。佛教传统中的“观生”,并非指向生理肉身,而是观照色身的无常与虚妄。从九想观到五蕴观,这类修观法门旨在破除对身体恒常实有的执念,令修行者在身心流变中证悟无我与空性。陈督兮的绘画正是对这一思想的视觉转译:他笔下的身体图像始终游走在生成与消解之间,仿佛恒常栖居于流动的气韵之中。笔者在《身体风景:中国当代艺术中的身体》中提出“身体即风景”的观念。诸如《内经图》《修真图》等道教图像,呈现的并非解剖学视角下的身体,而是气的流转运化结构,是身心合一、天人合一的视觉寓言。身体是山川河流的缩影,是天地节气的容器。因而图像的使命不在于解构身体,而在于引导修身养性。正如艺术史学者石守谦所言,中国古代图像的核心在于“由图像构筑的知识秩序”,不求写实摹形,重在体悟明理。陈督兮的创作,正是将这种“可观而不可尽言”的图像系统在当代重新激活。与之相对,西方医学图像根植于主客二分的知识体系:X光、核磁共振、CT等影像,将身体视作信息源代码,逐层解剖、量化、归类。乔纳森·克拉里曾指出,现代性的观看是一种“观察者的技术”,观看不再是自然感官经验,而是制度规训下的操控方式。陈督兮的图像实践,拒绝归顺这套知识规训下的观看机制。他的画作不是被动“被观看”的物件,而是构筑全新“身体性”的图像场域:观者唯有以自身身体介入,方能真正“看见”作品。这正是陈督兮作品在当代图像政治语境中的抵抗价值。他所描绘的身体,不是可被编码、归档、规训的客体,而是以风景、节律、气韵形态存在的“未完成的身体”。陈督兮的创作呼应了我提出的“身体即风景”理念:身体观即是自然观,亦是宇宙观。在他的画中,身体不再是孤立个体,而是与山川、草木、节气、气流、图像同频共振的生命存在。因此,他的图像从来不是标准答案,而是一场持续的修行练习。观看这些作品,如同步入一座无以名状的山谷,周遭是未定型的结构、浮动的线条与延绵不绝的气息。而你,不再是旁观的看客,已然成为这气息中的一员。这些画作不只是可视的物象,更是可相融共处的气场;不只是身体的影像,更是知觉的修行训练。置身其间,我们所修所悟的,不仅是对图像的感知,更是对他者、对自然、对自我的重新观照。由此,绘画再度成为趋近于“道”的修行之法。