IN SEARCH OF SPIRITUAL SPACE: SPIRITUAL JOURNEY THROUGH THE GREAT ETHER

Seeing these tensions in the Chan philosophy context, they are about the void that is not the vacuity, and the right balance of what is intrinsic and what is transcendental, which must come into a synthesis in the viewer’s mind. “Tension” is not quite the right description of the kind of push-and-pull tussles in Li Chen sculptures, as they look completely serene and resolved, only because they stimulate the mental processes in the viewer of an animated mass between mass and void. (extracted from : Li Chen’s New Works and the Spiritual in Art in Li Chen: Mind˙Body˙Spirit, by Kwok Kian Chow, Director of the Singapore Art Museum)

The Noumenon of Contrast is born from the heights of spiritual perfection where the ethereal existence emerges by forgetting an etic or emic world with any “I” or “it”. A higher plane where the myriad of things and individuality, and our personal experiences, all belong to an exo-taxonomy, whereas profound spiritual endeavor, with a pure heart unaffected by external desires, lights the sole path to a mature soul. This work responds as an echo to the 2002 piece Clear Soul, which had already reached the sublime realm of meditative Zen nirvana, as the Noumenon of Contrast calls forth the dual forgetfulness which permits one to escape the limits of material reality and corporeality as anchors to the flightful soul, revealing the endless sea of consciousness as ever closer to our humanism. This mystical work appears as if in an upper and lower existence, much like one might expect at dawn when looking across the still waters at their own mirror image, with a unity of reality and reflection. The observer recalls to mind the phenomenon of a lake located in the center, and the absent water reposes an elegant sense of movement to the human figure, revealing a vivid presence. In terms of this inimitable sculptural achievement, Li Chen has managed to capture the flow of water in its utter absence, and reflection, the solid and liquid in mutual contrast, as the perfect synergistic harmony of the noumenon of reality and phenomenon of virtuality.