In Golden Age, nearly identical Buddha images share the same scale, posture, and arched niche structure, generating a highly repetitive and ordered visual field.

During the month, Wang Mansheng worked in the Dunhuang caves, repeatedly imagining ancient painters and craftsmen laboring beside him—copying sutras, carvings, and enduring the hardships of daily repetition as a vehicle for boundless prayer. Through devotion, vow-making, and bodily labor, image-making entered a karmic ethical system in which the Buddhist icon-making was itself understood as an act of cultivation.

In Chinese history, the flourishing and destruction of Buddhist image-making have always followed shifts in political power. Large-scale production was often accompanied by equally large-scale destruction and looting, leaving behind fragmented material traces. The work’s formal repetition erases not only the individual craftsman’s self, but also the historical traces of both craftsmen and destroyers. As a paper-based print medium fundamentally dependent on reproduction, it no longer points to devotional repetition alone, but to the systematized production, circulation, and consumption of Buddhist images across history.

Looking closely, variations in ink density, printing pressure, and material condition reveal the inevitable deviations produced in real processes of replication. The black background removes specific spatial and historical context, while the use of gold evokes the visual tradition of the “golden body” and eras of prosperity in Buddhist art. Yet in its flattened surface, the gold evokes a brilliance as fragile as civilization itself—perhaps pointing toward a “golden age” that survives only in memory and imagination.

《黄金时代》由大量近乎相同的佛像形象密集排列而成。佛像在尺度、姿态与拱龛结构上一致，呈现出一种高度重复以及秩序化的视觉效果。单一形象的独特性被有意消減，观看者的目光被引导在重复中游移。

在敦煌洞窟工作的那一个月里，艺术家反复想象古代画工与工匠就在身旁作业，时间在洞窟中折叠，他在想象中化为他们中的一员。抄写佛经，雕刻佛像，日复一日重复劳作的艰辛承载着无尽的祈祷，把虔诚的身心供养给神明。一种通过布施、发愿与身体劳动进入因果伦理体系的实践，造像本身被视修行的一部分。

在中国历史中，佛教造像的兴盛与毁灭始终依附于权力的更迭。大规模的造像活动往往伴随着同样大规模的破坏、盗采与消失，历史所遗留下来的，更多是断裂的物质痕迹。造像者不可考，破坏者也在时间中隐没，千万信徒虔诚的祈愿被利用与覆盖，最终留下的，只有残缺的佛像本身，作为沉默却顽固的证据。

这件作品在形式上的重复，抹除的不只是造像者的自我，还有历史中具体之人的痕迹。远看近乎无差别的佛像形象，压低了个人身份与作者性。而纸本版画这一高度依赖复制机制的媒介下的千佛图像，或许不再指向修行中的重复，而是指向佛造像在历史中被制度化生产、传播与消耗的过程。

历史图像在传播与保存过程中始终伴随着损耗与失真。细看之下，画面中的佛像仍呈现出细微差异：墨色深浅、转印力度与材料状态的变化，这是复制过程在现实条件中不可避免产生的偏移。黑色背景抹除了具体的空间与历史坐标，使佛像形象仿佛悬置于不可复原的时空之中；金色的使用唤起佛教造像中关于“金身”与盛世的视觉传统，而金色在平面化的呈现中显露出如人类文明一般辉煌的脆弱。在黑色背景上飘浮着的金色佛像，是否正指向一个只存在于记忆与想象中的“黄金时代”？