"Life has many detours in it. The art is to admire the scenery along the way." (Zen Wisdom)
East and West, Zen Buddhism and European romanticism, traditional Chinese art training and the independent art academy in Stuttgart: Xianwei Zhu moves between opposites, which he combines in his painting. It is the landscape which the painter, born in Qingdao, China, uses as a motif for his contemplation. Mountains, lakes, forests - wrapped in mist, dissolved in a free painting, with glazing liquid colors and a choppy brushstroke - remind at first sight of traditional mountain-water paintings from China: Xianwei Zhu abstracts the landscape, covers it in the haze of dawn.
It is the exchange that the painter so appreciates: the exchange of objects, nothing seems to be fixed, everything seems to flow, the initially strong color is covered by a delicate white layer of mist, it is the greatness of nature and the smallness of man - often represented by means of a small figure at the edge of the picture - turned away from the viewer, she looks, like him, at the majesty of nature. A classic example of the painting of European Romanticism. Who does not know them, the breathtaking, awe-inspiring landscape paintings of a Caspar David Friedrich? Small are we humans, large and sublime nature: "When a region is shrouded in mist, it appears larger, more sublime, and heightens the imagination and tenses the expectation. Eye and imagination are generally more attracted to the fragrant distance than to what is so near and clear before the eyes," according to Friedrich. The pantheism of that time, which was just as influential in Hölderlin's poems as it was in Caspar David Friedrich's god-like nature, is diametrically opposed to the teachings of the Chinese. In Zen Buddhism, God is superfluous, the painters who followed this premise have let everything merge into each other: "The mountains float above the clouds and move through the clouds. above the clouds and wander through the sky. The peaks of the water are the mountains; the wandering of the mountains, upwards and downwards, happens constantly on the water", according to the Japanese scholar Dôgen.
And in the middle of it all a wanderer: Xianwei Zhu. His pictures in no way claim the sublime of a romanticism and at the same time they are not to be understood as an "emptiness", which Taoist Chinese painting carries as an essential quality. Neither is a traditional Chinese landscape depicted, just as the exact depiction of German nature is not recognizable. Xianwei Zhu studies the landscape around him, sketches it: classically, with ink on paper and yet he works freely in the studio, nature arises from his inner being, from his impressions and he dissolves the objects, exchanges the property and lets solid flow.
His roots are in China - his current home is Germany. When asked about his imprint through books, Xianwei Zhu answers: "I like to read philosophy and poetry: Heidegger, Hölderlin, Rilke, Lao Tzu and old poems from China." It is the perfect union which the painter leaves us on his canvas. The look at tradition and the opening to the future and at the same time very well the critical social nod to the present time: "People in the digital age are moving further and further away from nature and I hope that my paintings will awaken the desire to return to nature."
Let us consider this desire, like the small back figure in his work: first reverently and then self-confidently, we immerse ourselves in nature and become one with what we encounter in the picture. Olivia Franke (Director Künstlerhaus Lukas and Neues Kunsthaus Ahrenshoop) writes of Xianwei Zhu's work, "These paintings don't primarily bring the world before our eyes, but the viewer toward the world." Let's set out and wander through the landscape of this bridge builder and accompany him a bit on his migration.
"Before someone studies Zen, mountains are mountains and water is water; after a first glimpse into the truth of Zen, mountains are no longer mountains, and water is no longer water; after enlightenment, mountains are mountains again, and water is water again." (Zen Wisdom)
