Ding Yi: Crosses '89 - '98

Theorization of casualness Monica Dematte, Ph. D. Italy 1997

Ding Yi started to paint the Cross series in 1988. Using a very simple and neutral pattern, "+" which was prompted by his knowledge of printing techniques (the cross marked and divided the surface of the sheets), he challenged himself to transform its simplicity and functionality into a pictorially rich and variegated subject. The ten years since Ding Yi's original conception have served to prove the richness of that transformation.

The evolution of Ding Yi's paintings reveals a progressive maturing of that begin in cold, mental determination and developed towards a more open and relaxed relationship with himself and with the world. The young Ding neither wanted nor needed to be identified as a "Chinese" artist: rather he contrived to overstep the boundaries of nationality. Indeed his geometric structures are so far from the Chinese tradition that we would never be inclined to search with any relationship with that tradition. Only in looking more deeply can we find surprising analogies.

In his mid-20s, Ding decided to spend his days bent on large canvases for hours and hours covering them each methodically and precisely with colorful pigments which he randomly juxtaposed. Imposing this hard physical discipline on himself, he cultivated a close relationship with the canvas which might justly be considered a kind of meditation. Renouncing any display of his technical skills and virtuosity - to draw lines seems to require patience rather than mastery - he chose to undergo a humble apprenticeship which forced him to repeat the same pattern over and over again, denying his own immediate pleasure for a higher achievement in the future. In using such an approach Ding recovered its original meaning and value: his intuition was that any knowledge, any mastery and, evolution required a period of interiorization, of mental "digestion". So, if the start of his Cross phase was purely theoretic, the way it developed showed a close link to a more fully appreciable ground of both manual dexterity and technicality with a somewhat spiritual impetus (if we can keep such aspects separate) recalls to mind the long learning process involved in Chinese traditional painting (Zhongguo hua). I think it far from inconsequential that Ding Yi actually studied Zhongguo hua even though he had then written a thesis criticizing its conservative stillness.

From the early works to today's paintings, the Cross series shows a surprisingly wide variety of appearance, color and materials. After the precise lines of the original, Ding went on to conceive more relaxed structures, which did not need measurements, and so the play of positive-negative is evident in his black and white works. He then experimented with different materials; chalk and charcoal took the place of the more even acrylic and non-treated canvas, producing a texturally rich result.

Ding Yi likes to mention the casualness of nature. He did so when we first met in 1992, talking about the way he puts together different colors as he still does now, when refers to the "tartan" fabrics he has recently chosen as a basis for evolving his art further. Apparently nothing less resembles nature than this kind of support, Ding Yi compares the feeling he has when he is in front of a new tartan, and is deciding how to "intervence" on it, to the one of a landscape painter who has to translate a natural scene on the canvas. The artist becomes a medium between what he sees and what he wants to convey - and in this case, both the landscape and the tartan motives are a predetermined and complex basis compositions emerging upon a blank canvas.

At the same time Ding is aware of the strong "industrial" implication of machine-produced fabrics, and, taking up another challenge, he wants to be able to raise such to the status of art. The challenge is even more daring if we consider that the brush strokes he applies are not a display of pictorial skill but are rather simple, which any person familiar with the brush could produce. In this sense Ding Yi openly disagrees with the traditionally held belief that technical skill should always be visible and apparent.

To look at details of the paintings and to look at the whole picture evokes different responses. With the details, even considering the unevenness of the freehanded strokes give an impression of regularity and monotony, the larger view adds spontaneity, richness, depth and casualness to the supporting medium. A support chosen for its flatness, regularity and predictability becomes something else. Again, it is a challenge which Ding has proved himself to be a master of.