Guo Fengyi: Who is Guo Fengyi?

Location: Long March Space, Beijing (formerly known as 25000 Cultural Transmission Center)

Duration: September 17 – November 20, 2005

The body of Guo Fengyi is that of a vessel – her body acting as a channel for the energy which she draws upon to create her works. After retiring in 1987 due to health problems, Guo Fengyi began practicing Qigong as a means to alleviate her illness, strengthening her health through an understanding of the bodily contents of energy. This content led to form when suddenly after two years of practicing Qigong, she began to have strong visions which she felt compelled to express through drawing.

The body of Guo Fengyi’s work is that of appearance – the visual expression of the essence and the intangible. Schematic diagrams of the body and health, images of a supernatural world, and drawings of distant places and concepts, the physical drawing connecting with the metaphysical contemplations – form leading back to content and content lending itself back to form in an continuous exchange. She draws not only to understand her subject, but to alter the energy of her subject through her quick and diligent brush strokes. A hybridization in which subject and author are fused and inseparable in the process of visualization, strongly connect with I-Ching, which explains genesis from the yin and yang.

In conjunction with the physical migration which characterizes the twenty-first century, there is also a psychological migration. Both journey’s encompass a self-discovery in which an engagement with the “Other” leads to the expansion of the boundaries of subjectivity. Who is Guo Fengyi? As the artist notes herself, " Before I draw, I do not know what it will become, It is only after I finish drawing that I know. Looking at the work afterwards, I am able to see several other things. I draw because I do not know, I draw to know." The work of Guo Fengyi is “our actuality” – offering us a drawing of what we are ceasing to be while providing a sketch of what we are becoming.

The body of Guo Fengyi is that of a vessel – her body acting as a channel for the energy which she draws upon to create her works. After retiring in 1987 due to health problems, Guo Fengyi began practicing Qigong as a means to alleviate her illness, strengthening her health through an understanding of the bodily contents of energy. This content led to form when suddenly after two years of practicing Qigong, she began to have strong visions which she felt compelled to express through drawing.

The body of Guo Fengyi’s work is that of appearance – the visual expression of the essence and the intangible. Schematic diagrams of the body and health, images of a supernatural world, and drawings of distant places and concepts, the physical drawing connecting with the metaphysical contemplations – form leading back to content and content lending itself back to form in an continuous exchange. She draws not only to understand her subject, but to alter the energy of her subject through her quick and diligent brush strokes. A hybridization in which subject and author are fused and inseparable in the process of visualization, strongly connect with I-Ching, which explains genesis from the yin and yang.

In conjunction with the physical migration which characterizes the twenty-first century, there is also a psychological migration. Both journey’s encompass a self-discovery in which an engagement with the “Other” leads to the expansion of the boundaries of subjectivity. Who is Guo Fengyi? As the artist notes herself, " Before I draw, I do not know what it will become, It is only after I finish drawing that I know. Looking at the work afterwards, I am able to see several other things. I draw because I do not know, I draw to know." The work of Guo Fengyi is “our actuality” – offering us a drawing of what we are ceasing to be while providing a sketch of what we are becoming.