In the dead of night
When we wake up alone
We will forget
All the goals and ambitions of life in the daytime
Suddenly, you will realize a real loneliness
We live in a "out of focus" deep space of the universe
Where will our suspended souls stop?
Here is the black box
A museum that houses all the extraordinary spiritual worlds of the universe
A dream showroom exhibiting countless horrific wonders
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Blurring often means that something is out of focus. Either we cannot judge the true distance from each other, or we are unable to focus on our senses themselves. In Alfred North Whitehead's Philosophy of Organism, it is argued that entities are events or processes that expand space-time, and that the nature of the world is a dynamical process that is constantly generated. This epistemology, which treats processes as world entities, is also called "process philosophy", where everything is reinterpreted in terms of "relation-process", which does not recognize the existence of an unchanging entity.
Zhu Bing Out of Focus 22016 Oil on canvas 97×130cm
This theory can be seen as a "procedural" interpretation of the work of art, implying that art is essentially a fluid, and this epistemology does not recognize the existence of true focus, but that the only constant in the world is change itself, which is equivalent to indirectly acknowledging that we are in a dark and invisible world around us. In the "Out of Focus" series of works by artist Zhu Bing, this human situation is shown and carried out from the perspective of an artist. In this disfocused world, we are like orphans in the dark and deep sky, gravitational force from all directions, dragging us in any direction at will, in which we lose all sense of direction, only a passive, powerless state of resistance.
The artist said no, still have to fight, still fight. In Zhu Bing's vague "Bamboo" series, we see an action about "grid objects", just as Wang Yangming once stared at bamboo day and night in order to identify the principles of the saints. It implies that in this unfocused world, we still expect to know the truth of the world, so that we can have a place to support in this wandering world.
Zhu Bing Bamboo 2020 Oil on canvas 50×40cm
Zhu Bing Waterfall 2022 Oil on canvas 100×80cm
When Zhu Xi said that we should exhaustively study the principles of things, the only way to know the way of all things and the origin of human virtue, but Wang Yangming poured blood on the bamboo, and still could not understand the truth and meaning of why we were born as human beings. He turned inward, thinking that only by gazing into his own heart would he be able to attain truth. This change in the perspective of observation is still evident in Zhu Bing's "Bamboo" series, a state of unavoidable and constantly demanding.
This "mentality" and Zhu Bing's expressionist style of painting have the same nature in the core. So, where does this kind of externalistic mentality come from, at least in the "Abandoned Garden" series for more than a decade. An aesthetic of the destruction of the external world, in a sense, also the broken aesthetic of the spiritual world, which points to the broken imagery that fills all tragedies. Those collapsing fragments imply uncontrollable and absurd pressure from the world, suggesting that where the ruins appear, those false appearances will also be removed.
Zhu Bing Abandoned Garden No.102008 Oil on canvas 180x200cm
Zhu Bing Abandoned Garden No.16 2012 Oil on canvas 180×200cm
In Zhu Bing's mental world, this shattering and destruction carries a considerable degree of strength and is piled up with power. More than a decade later, elements of ruins can still be seen in works such as "Development Land" and "Green Face". It can be seen that it has shown the color of the bottom of the artist's spirit, as in Jorge Luis Borges's Las ruinas circulares, we cannot escape the circular apparition of our own dreams. "We are the phantom of time", as if it were a footnote to the artist, just as time destroys everything, and everything will be out of focus due to the deformation of time. It is a deep-seated nihilistic complex.
Here, everything is thrown towards a "processivist" outlook on life, as it begins. When Sisyphus pushes the stone up the mountain in the absurd, the only way to fight this absurdity is to cut a moment of time fragment itself. It allows us to begin to pay real attention to the momentary fragments of time, which is "the present is eternity." Here, the "present" is no longer limited to the present time, but a slice of all time, which can be either the present, history or the future. "Now" can only reach the eternity of Sisyphus in this sense.
Zhu Bing Mi lin No.20 2014-2021 Oil on canvas 200×180cm
Zhu Bing Mi Lin No.21 2021 Oil on canvas 114×80cm
Zhu Bing Blue Scene 2018 Oil on canvas 150×180cm
Reality and unreal seem to be one and the same, as the artist moves outward and inward at the same time, as shown in the Bamboo series. In this immediate state of mind, both internal and external, it is certain to have a surreal dream characteristic, because the subconscious sea under the artist's state of mind has become one with reality. In many works, we can see that, just like the relationship between the forest and Zhu Bing, it carries a texture of "Black Forest", which has traces of aesthetic heritage (German Expressionism). A deep mystery, placed deep in the forest that shades the sky, is similar to levitating in the void.
People are easily lost in it. Forests represent an eternal threat, as described by the American novelist Herman Melville in Moby Dick. This fear is a fear of the "forces of evil", a universal complex, in other words, "nothingness" is equated here with "evil". In Martin Heidegger's "poetic philosophy," he sees the "Black Forest" as a key image, a mysterious and maternal patron, a Stockholm syndrome of philosophers, which is still evident in Albert Camus.
Zhu Bing Observer 2018 Oil on canvas 130×97cm
Zhu Bing Patrol 2021 Oil on canvas 60×50cm
Here in Zhu Bing, the image of the forest is still thick and impenetrable, and the place where we are located is all held back by inexplicable forces. How should we live in such a disfocused world? This is almost equivalent to: how should we live in such a nihilistic world? The artist uses real-world imagery to capture our state here: whether it is surveyors, observers, miners, climbers, etc., we seem to be explorers in this labyrinth.
Zhu Bing's color is a deep color, which itself carries a deep, mysterious and ineffable meaning. The transformation of brushstrokes and the heaviness of the mountains and the growth of the forest are precisely the key moments of an artist's intuition and philosophy, and the casting of his pictorial language is like a snowstorm that is raging in the night, and it condenses an exciting force in its tranquility. This power, in Moby Dick, is both a fearless challenge like Captain Ahab and an existential posture of the sailor Emmali, which shows either fighting or destruction, unwilling to be adrift in the soul of life.
Zhu Bing Xianglei 2020 Oil on canvas 30×40cm
Zhu Bing Lightning 2017 Oil on canvas 50×60cm
Zhu Bing Infinite Scenery in Dangerous Peak No.2 2018 Oil on canvas 150×180cm
This has led many to believe that loneliness has its original power, as all those who pour into the existential philosophy of existence do. People think that loneliness is an inevitable objective state, and if everything is out of focus, then our relationships and emotions with others are also out of focus, which shows that people are also ruins and dense forests, and we cannot establish real relationships with others. Simply seek freedom, which is exactly what "Infinite Scenery in the Dangerous Peak" expounds, or just to catch a glimpse of distant thunder in the depths of the dense forest.
A feeling is manifested in this, but we are still in suspension, and we create a placebo for ourselves to resist the fate and fear of the suspended void, as Zhu Bing said: "Like a lost lamb standing at a crossroads and wandering." Here, too, the artist is good at journaling, and in these fragmentary texts we can glimpse the thunder in the depths of his soul. Obviously, the artist believes that we are animals limited to time and space, in other words, the artist indirectly acknowledges that we are slaves.
Zhu Bing Untitled 2019 Oil on canvas 97×130cm
Zhuhei Self-Portrait 2016 Cloth Oil Painting 80×100cm
Zhu Bing Green Garden 2021 Oil on canvas 100×80cm
Although the artist cannot see what kind of slaves we really are, the suspension of human beings he has seen has shown that we are indeed slaves. We live a life of unconsciousness, and the artist fully exhibits this state, through the ashes-colored pen in his hand. Sooner or later, these terrible fragments of torn souls will also turn the soul into useless ruins, and if we assume that all this shows that we humans have no real meaning in living, we live in the eyes of artists as an excuse for generation after generation: we lack a real reason to live.
This conclusion must be out of focus. Does human life have a truly de facto absolute meaning? This is absolutely not answerable in a state of out-of-focus, and no matter how much we struggle in a state of out-of-focus, we still cannot get rid of it. Is this fate? In a sense, yes. But all these questions are answered almost in a blunt manner. These outspoken forms logically show that there must be true outspokenness, and that this true outspokenness must come from an absolute eternity, where it is incomparably clear, where there is no loss of focus. There, Alfred North Whitehead must have been wrong.
（End）
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The silver chain is broken
The pot of gold cracked
The bottle was damaged by the spring
The water wheel was broken at the wellhead
The dust still returns to the ground
The spirit remains to the Spirit-giver
The themes here are: psychoanalysis, dream studies, and anthropology
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