Conversation - 11. 20. 2021

Li Yizhuo: From private life to newspaper headlines, contemplated abstraction to industrial spectacles, and crystalline forms to entangled phenomena, how do you locate and treat the source of your images?

Tan Mu: The selection and treatment of images in my work are, in general, intuitive. I work from the phenomena toward knowledge about the nature of things, or “格物致知”, a concept central in Chinese philosophy since around the 5th-century B.C.E. I look at the sea, the television as an apparatus, the movement of atoms, and the Big Bang. Observation is an essential exercise; painting, then, resembles a continuous refinement of surveying and mapping. From the microscopic to the utmost macroscopic, I observe all that is in between, all that sweeps and splashes through the world, brought by human wisdom and ignorance. At the same time, I am also amazed by the laws of the universe, which perhaps resonates with the “noble simplicity and quiet grandeur” in Winckelmann’s aesthetics.

  • History of Science and Technology

Li Yizhuo: What is a painter looking for by documenting the history of science and technology—and hence, the construct of a scientific and knowledge culture?


Tan Mu: My creative process feels like an extended question-and-answer session with myself—a journey of exploration into who I am, my surroundings, and the forces shaping them. This requires delving into our shared culture and history, much like piecing together the puzzles of society. The undeniable transformations in our world compel me to decipher how life unfolds in an era defined by atomic bombs and the internet. Reexamining science and technology is a vital subject of our time, and documenting these changes is a cornerstone of my artistic practice.

We are living through an era of dramatic social transformation, driven by advancements in space exploration, quantum computing, nuclear energy, artificial intelligence, genetic engineering, and social media. These developments are reshaping fundamental aspects of human life, including work, relationships, aging, learning, and community building. As I reflect on this tech-enhanced world, I question how it will address the challenges we face. Painting is my response to this rapidly evolving civilization—I am painting, trying to make sense of myself and slow down. In a similar way to the ancient murals, it is the process of asking myself whether such events and objects are worth documenting that allows me to evaluate their spiritual validity.


  • Mediatized Society

Li Yizhuo: One may argue, a printmaker’s mind of layering and time passing helps translate the mediatized society onto your canvas?

Tan Mu: We as individuals make decisions every single moment. These countless, minute-chance events shape the society we experience and reflect on. In this process, I, as a part of the world, am also part of the computation. This big picture of society, generated by the accumulation and dissemination of infinite examples, is very similar to the process of thinking in printmaking in which layers are superimposed one after another.

I paint, so as to document the ways I engage society. It leads to a rich experience with temporality in my analysis of images and the process of painting.

  • Bodily and Spiritual Experience

Li Yizhuo: Which is engaged with more in your work: experience or rational thinking, if there is a distinction as such?


Tan Mu: Digitization is an accelerating trend that affects our sensory experience. Everything is by all means encoded. I marvel at the silence of beauty, so I emphasize its transience, which is moderate, humble, and retreated. When I meditate on the shapes of these origins of life, embryos, bacteria, fruits, clouds as well as motion trajectories and chemical fission processes, I see a topology of the torus. It embodies the fundamental energy flow pattern and the mathematical basis of the universe. I experience the permanence and infinity of nature through this energy. This “nature-based” aesthetic restores, to some extent, the sanity and balance of the art of living.

 

Li Yizhuo is a researcher of the experimental, archival, and cartographic endeavors in contemporary art. Currently a prae doc at the University of Vienna, she has directed research and programming at FRESCO Collective (New York) and realized curatorial projects at OCAT Institute (Beijing), Al Balad Residency (Jeddah), and Uni Vienna.