Contemplation / Meditation: Concepts and Cultures : Asia Week New York

Fu Qiumeng Fine Art presents Contemplation / Meditation: Concepts and Cultures, co-curated by Fu Qiumeng and Jeffrey Wechsler, exploring how Eastern and Western artists have visualized inner stillness, reflection, and heightened awareness. Bringing historical and contemporary works into dialogue, the exhibition considers art as a vehicle for spiritual presence. This presentation is made possible by the generous support of The Richard Pousette-Dart Foundation and Pace Gallery, whose collaboration has been indispensable to its realization.

In classical Chinese thought, the Dao is not merely a metaphysical principle but a lived path—one that leads toward inner illumination and alignment with cosmic order. Confucian philosophy provided the ethical architecture for this path. As stated at the opening of The Great Learning (Daxue) in the Book of Rites:

Gao Qipei (高其佩, 1660–1734), an innovative painter of the early Qing dynasty, is renowned as the foremost master of Chinese finger painting (指畫). Born into a Manchu family serving the imperial government, Gao pursued painting alongside his official duties. While finger painting had earlier precedents, he transformed it into a fully developed artistic language, employing fingers, fingernails, and the palm in place of the brush to produce bold textures, sweeping washes, and expressive structural lines. The technique became closely associated with the Gao family, whose members continued to practice and transmit the method.

Gao Qipei’s innovations were codified in the treatise Zhitou huashuo (《指頭畫說》, Treatise on Finger Painting), compiled in 1771 by his grandson Gao Bing (高秉), which details the theory and techniques of finger painting and helped preserve the family’s artistic legacy. Through this pioneering approach, Gao elevated what had once been regarded as a novelty into a respected form of literati expression, expanding the expressive potential of ink painting and securing finger painting a lasting place in the history of Chinese art. His work exemplifies the integration of bodily gesture, improvisation, and calligraphic sensibility, offering a dynamic alternative to brush-based practice and highlighting the performative possibilities of literati painting.

Finger painting’s immediacy and improvisational energy resonate strongly with the principles of Zen (Chan) painting. Like Chan artists, Gao emphasized spontaneity, direct perception, and the inseparability of body, mind, and brush (or finger). His sweeping gestures and flowing washes evoke the meditative act of attentive presence, where each mark is both an expression and a record of the artist’s mental and physical state. In this sense, Gao’s finger painting can be understood as a kinesthetic and contemplative practice, aligning closely with Zen’s pursuit of awakening through action and the embodiment of emptiness (xū) and vitality (qi).

Within much of the writing about American Abstract Expressionism, the role of the natural world is often seen as unimportant -- something to be avoided, even superseded in the quest for pure, self-generated non-objective painting.  When asked about the role of nature in his art, Jackson Pollock notably declared, “I am nature”.  The notion of placing oneself as equal to nature, or even considering nature to be unnecessary in art is, to the East Asian mind, essentially an unthinkable attitude. American Abstract Expressionists who dared to include nature as a source for their art were often regarded as retrograde, and insufficient in their dedication to abstraction.  Nevertheless, several Abstract Expressionists welcomed nature into their work, and it is not surprising that some of them expressed significant links to East Asian art, aesthetics and philosophy.  One of the key figures in this regard is Rollin Crampton.

In his contemplative view of nature as a world of interpenetrating forms and energies, Crampton acknowledged his vital links to Eastern art and religion.  Concerning his conception of art, Crampton said it was based “essentially [on] an Oriental philosophy, especially Zen,” and that he was “very much interested in Buddhism [as] a guiding principle.”  He respected Buddhism’s “regard for nature and the sacredness of life,” and was attracted to Zen’s search for “essences,” for “getting down to a certain simplicity.”

Quite forthrightly, Crampton embraced such essences and simplicity.  Many of Crampton’s paintings are nearly monochrome, presenting subtly nuanced surfaces of off-whites, grays, or black.  Indeed, certain dark gray and black works may offer surfaces so barely inflected that they can initially appear as dense, homogenous voids.  Nevertheless, many of these works have a specific basis in nature – the sea.  Here, a vast, calm expanse may blend with the sky (especially at late dusk or night) to create a natural apparent emptiness or undefinable space that invites the eye and mind to contemplate upon what may lie within the indistinct, and to meditate upon the infinite.

In Golden Age, nearly identical Buddha images share the same scale, posture, and arched niche structure, generating a highly repetitive and ordered visual field. The individuality of any single figure is deliberately subdued, and the viewer’s gaze is invited to drift slowly across the rhythm of recurring forms.

During the month he worked in the caves of Dunhuang, the artist repeatedly imagined the ancient painters and craftsmen laboring beside him. Time seemed to fold within the cave, and in his imagination he became one among them. Copying sutras, carving Buddhist images—day after day of repeated labor carried with it countless prayers, offering body and devotion to the divine. 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 makers of these images remain unknown, and the agents of their destruction have likewise faded into time. The devout wishes of countless believers were appropriated and overwritten, leaving behind only the damaged figures themselves, silent yet stubborn witnesses to what once was.

Historical images inevitably undergo loss and distortion in the course of transmission and preservation. Looking closely, variations in ink density, printing pressure, and material condition reveal the inevitable deviations produced in theprocesses of replication. The black background erases specific spatial and historical context, leaving the figures suspended in a time and space that can no longer be reconstructed. The use of gold recalls the visual tradition of the Buddha’s “golden body” and the imagery of a flourishing era within Buddhist art. Yet in its flattened surface, the gold evokes a brilliance as fragile as civilization itself. Floating against the black ground, the golden Buddhas seem to gesture toward a “Golden Age” that may exist only in memory and imagination.