When I was about twenty years old I had a seventy year old friend whom I called Grandfather. He told me of his experience of practicing Buddhism for over 30 years in a prison, I had no particular experience to tell him so I shared with him a special secret of mine. In those days I was so afraid of getting into contact with the real world that each month at least for a couple of days I would huddle up in a corner of my room, not moving, not speaking, not smelling and not looking, all I was doing was to get into the deepest part of my heart somewhat like descending the staircase step by step until I arrived in a fragrant grassland full of sunshine. Then I took out my heart and exposed it to the sun. When my heart was fully relaxed and warm I would get back to the normal world. Grandfather then taught me a sitting pose of meditation. Apart from the pose, the key was to imagine one’s head inside one’s stomach. I gave it a try and felt as if I saw the shadow in the deep bottomless lake and I had the sort of fear like that of the ugly little duck. Grandfather then told me a six-word maxim but it was senseless to me so I just could not remember it. I asked him why it must be these six words and not any other six words. He said that I could also say shit-fart-urine-penis-pudenda, the important thing was not to associate with any form, color, smell or sense of any kind. Until today I have never been capable of doing this nor have I remembered the six-word maxim. However, in my private and routine manner, combing systematically my feeling of the outside world has become my psychological habit. This is probably the so-called ‘catharsis’.

In ‘In the World’, Zhuangzi said that it is easier not to walk than walking without leaving trace. Zhuangzi lived about two thousand years ago and he was well known for being completely natural and unrestrained. He clearly perceived that living in the world it was impossible to be completely unconventional and detached. If one wants to be carefree there are always certain conditions. Those conditions become more demanding the more one is intelligent. When Kunpeng - the legendary big bird - makes a stroke or spreads its wings, if it is not against the huge sea waves and the strong sky wind, it can never acquire such a wide field of vision and breath of mind. We often admire those who are unfettered and care free but we quite often do not know the heavy cost for the heart and mind of having such an experience. Therefore, by all kinds of means leaving heart and mind free and in a state of transparency became an indispensable need of the mankind who can ‘think’. ‘The Heart Scripture’ says that outside the world of ‘color’, it does not exist a ‘vacant’ world. When traveling in the world of ‘color’, your ‘heart’ is disturbed, confused, dazed or simply collapsed; it does not matter, the important thing is to return to its ‘fundamental’. Buddha has always sought its amelioration in the secular world, lotus absorbed nutrient from the filthy mud but not contaminated by it, the noble living the popular life but keeping its freshness and coolness, and the popular saying like being able to take it up but being equally able to lay it down or even-tempered or good humored etc all mean the same thing. Everybody needs the ‘catharsis’, but not necessarily in the only way of painstakingly practicing Buddhism.

In the traditional Chinese society, those who need the catharsis the most are the literati. They are eternally divided and unbalanced between the ambition of ‘administrating well the state and running well a home’ and the strong desire of keeping one’s purity by cultivating one’s moral character. Consoling oneself by ‘If one is rich and successful, one should look after the land under heaven, but if one is not rich and successful, one should only improve oneself’, Neither going along with the evils in troubled waters nor being disillusioned by the mortal world, swaying back an forth between being unable to stop even if one wants to and the desire to comment but then think the better of it, obsessed by the feeling of the attachment and helplessness. Their catharsis is to go inside the mountains and waters, but even if they claim to be charmed by the natural landscape with no intention to seek fame and wealth, in fact they are still attracted to the secular world, the landscape is only a ‘mirror’ reflecting their hidden pain and sense of loss. In ‘Fisherman’, Quyuan stated that “the water is so dear it cleans my head the water is so muddy it washes my feet”. But this is only an unattainable realm. Buddha says that there are three steps to Chan: the first one is when you look at the mountain, it is the mountain; the second one is that when you look at the mountain, it looks like the mountain but it isn’t the mountain and the third one is when you look at the mountain, it is still the mountain.’ But these men of letters often stay in the second step of Chan, they fail to see the final landscape. However, this ‘prison of heart’ helped to accomplish the highest level of literary and artistic experience. In this sense, the traditional men of letters are simply artists, the creation of the poetry and painting of landscape is their process of catharsis. As a result, their basic form of expression remains chanting their feelings without seeking a great variety of changes in the forms they stress the importance of corresponding nature between the choice of brushwork and words and their soul, personality and cultivation and other spiritual elements. Fundamentally, their works are sad, but the details are full of joy. It is like playing in a deep pool, they concentrate on playing and feeling they do not really go deep in the pool, lingering on but never despair.

We live in the modern world of explosion of information, it is said that the human nerve system is attacked by 100 000 pieces of information every second. This is really very heavy and could lead to a complete breakdown. We need the catharsis more than ever. Even the Western people attach more and more importance to the protection of heart and mind. I remember seeing a caricature: a small person traveling in the road with a very reduced back bag, with big transparent windows in his head, we see the floating clouds in the windows. Similar to deleting or reforming our disk in order to clear our computer, we need to do deduction for our head. To look at the world from another approach is very often the method of catharsis for modern men. It is like when we were children; we put our heads under the crotch of trousers and got an upside down view of the world.

All the artists of this exhibition are in their ‘forties’. They have gone through several big changes of the social values; their cultural memory is rich and complicated, full of contradictions and conflicts. Regularly combing and reexamining the cultural memory for which we have touched or perturbed could help get rid of certain burden linked to a specific cultural influence. And then we could feel a kind of comfort and lightness therefore regain force to restart to learn something new and go on. The expressions used here are similar to ‘catharsis’; of course, the particular form of catharsis is personified depending on each artist’s ‘personal anxiety’.

In "Fasting of the Heart", the approach is to have a "specific picture" first and then cover, dissolve and weaken it with abstract touches. "Fasting of the Heart" is different from Pop Art. The latter often takes political and social symbols with a deep impact on life and dissolves it in ironic mimicry. On the contrary, "Fasting of the Heart" represents a process of dissolving culture and personal memory, accompanied by gaining new knowledge by reviewing the old and a sentimental attachment. The difference between "Fasting of the Heart" and "Prayer Beads and Brush Strokes" lies in: the latter is a calm and infinite repetition of a certain brush stroke element, similar to meditation; and the former also means "reviewing" the original memory while dissolving it. It is a calm self-examination.