Manifestation of the Sages
Visual Machine
Water Lines
About
Manifestation of the Sages
2025 - Ongoing
This project is rooted in the dialectical relationship between seeing and visual narrative, exploring how modern archaeological methodology reshapes our understanding of history and perceptual world through intervening in visual narrative. Through a field investigation of the Shengguosi Temple relics at Mountain Fenghuangshan in Hangzhou, the project seeks to reflect on a central tension: while modern archaeological methods strive to define “historical truth,” do we simultaneously lose the transcendental, metaphysical perception inherent in Buddhist tradition.
The figures of “the Three Sages of the West” at Shengguosi Temple have endured a millennium of erosion and human catastrophe, they are unrecognisable today, also lack of detailed visual and textual archives. Faced with these absent Buddhas, artist employed methodologies from archaeological surveys such as textual research, iconology, epigraphy and typology, attempting to rebuild their initial appearance through a systematic analysis of visual images and archives. However, as the research deepened, a sense of contradiction emerged: can the rigorous, rational logic of archaeological surverys truly touch the essence of a Buddha’s existence?
Artist contends that under the intervention of analysis from achaeological technology, Seeing usually degenerates into a mere disassembly of the research object. Through this logical restructuring of material fragments, tech-images not only facilitates a visual expansion to fill the voids of history but also establishes a power narrative that seeks to define the truth.
In contrast, artist introduces the perspective of Vipassana (insight) from Buddhist practice. It guides us to detach from tangible physical relics and technical definitions, seeking instead an intuitive cognition. When the identity and chronology of the stone are temporarily suspended, the abstract, fragment, metaphysical field inherent in the object itself finally begins to manifest.
The figures of “the Three Sages of the West” at Shengguosi Temple have endured a millennium of erosion and human catastrophe, they are unrecognisable today, also lack of detailed visual and textual archives. Faced with these absent Buddhas, artist employed methodologies from archaeological surveys such as textual research, iconology, epigraphy and typology, attempting to rebuild their initial appearance through a systematic analysis of visual images and archives. However, as the research deepened, a sense of contradiction emerged: can the rigorous, rational logic of archaeological surverys truly touch the essence of a Buddha’s existence?
Artist contends that under the intervention of analysis from achaeological technology, Seeing usually degenerates into a mere disassembly of the research object. Through this logical restructuring of material fragments, tech-images not only facilitates a visual expansion to fill the voids of history but also establishes a power narrative that seeks to define the truth.
In contrast, artist introduces the perspective of Vipassana (insight) from Buddhist practice. It guides us to detach from tangible physical relics and technical definitions, seeking instead an intuitive cognition. When the identity and chronology of the stone are temporarily suspended, the abstract, fragment, metaphysical field inherent in the object itself finally begins to manifest.
Installation View (Selected works)