Greige fabric, water based high strength foam paste, acrylic paint, wire mesh,
adhesive
230×220×210mm
230×220×210mm
According to the passage of time, most of the Buddha statues in the Dunhuang grottoes have long since changed beyond recognition due to long history and human factors. The work consists only of the clothes of the Buddha statue, which aims to express not only the damage of the Buddha statue, but also the attitude of people towards seeking Buddha today. The trend of economic development in recent years and the impact of the new coronavirus on people have led to excessive reliance on the Internet. Cloud worship Buddha, cloud divination, cloud wish, once needed to experience things now seem to be done on the network. People get goals as quickly as they can, but they ignore the meaning of the process, the fact that the experience is part of the faith. The work is intended to be expressed through the suspension of the cassock of the Buddha. Now people do not understand the significance of Buddha sculpture and religion, so they blindly worship and pray for a positive response. The cassock is chosen with the representative of Dunhuang Grottoes Buddha sculptures of shoulder pendant style, mainly with gray silver and different gold as the main color of the work.
The work is inspired by the clay sculpture art of Buddha statues in the grottoes of Dunhuang, China. According to my personal appreciation of Buddha caves during travel, I have learned and observed that most of the artworks are no longer concerned about the beauty, most of them have been oxidized and eroded due to the natural environment, and some of them are maliciously destroyed by later generations. During my visit, I saw more than one visitor violating the rules set up for the protection of artworks, which is nothing but the destruction of art. Whether natural or man-made, it means that this large work of art has changed beyond recognition. This makes me curious about people's attitudes towards art and religion at a time of rapid technological development and change. Will our understanding of religion become more superficial because of technological changes.
The man-made destruction of Dunhuang Grottoes all happened before the advent of the Internet, so there is no relevant literature to accurately record the man-made malicious destruction events. But in the image collection Century Dunhuang: Once In My Eyes: Images of Mogao Grottoes in Dunhuang Since 1907, we can see a large number of characters written and carved on the surface of the works by later generations, most of which were written in the late Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China. In the book's introduction to Cave 57 of the Mogao Grottoes in Dunhuang, it says, "After 1908, the bhikkhu statue was painted with lines, and there was an inscription on its side saying, 'Lu Zhong visited this cave alone on September 14, 19 years old in the Republic of China.'"(民国十九年旧九月十四吕钟一人游 此洞)
Before starting to make this installation, considering that it is a 3d work, I drew multi-faceted renderings and internal support structure drawings for this work. After using high-density wire mesk to build the body outline, in order to make the garment fold more solid and three-dimensional in the subsequent simulation, I used low-density wire mesk to concave the general clothing fold relationship between the fabric and the contour support, which played a great role in the production of the clothing fold direction.
In the three-dimensional presentation of the work, I used water based high strength foam paste, which would appear irregular expansion after high-speed heating. This is very much in line with the message I want to convey through the work. The irregular expansion mimics the erosion of mold on the objects, and directly adds to the intuitive visual feeling of the statue of Buddha that has been corroded.