Origins of Sound

Born in the Xinjiang Autonomous Region of northwestern China, Qin Feng received formal training in oil painting, ink painting, and calligraphy at the Shandong Art Institute and in the 1980s experimented with Western avant-garde media. Once he moved abroad, however, Qin Feng, like other contemporary expatriate artists from China, chose to return to the materials of calligraphy and traditional ink painting, merging Chinese techniques and forms with gestures from Western expressionism. His work of the last decade often explores the theme of the "origins" of civilization and incorporates autobiographical reflections, including his childhood memories of watching the physical torture and suffering of his parents during the Cultural Revolution (1966–76).

This album was created in 1997, one year after Qin Feng moved to Berlin and had his first exhibitions in Europe. Viewed in the traditional manner, as individual leaves beginning on the far right, the composition emphasizes the passage of time. The comma-shaped dabs of bright red ink resemble drops of blood that, raining across the pages, seem to be swept by a wind, gathering together to form proto-ideographs and evolving into the Chinese characters for the cardinal directions—north, south, east, west, and center—as well as the names of the seasons. The only legible calligraphy in the work, however, quickly dissolves back into small dabs of ink. The thick, black brushstroke that sweeps horizontally across the entire work unites each pair of facing pages and resembles the heavily inked forms seen in many of Qin's massive hanging scrolls.