As my brush journeyed 9.33km, I felt
it had reached another dimension, into immortality. It has freed itself
from the shackles of what we know, but here I am, still on this earth,
pondering alone.
I kept trying to reach the state
that my brush had reached. Couldn’t. I tried again - tried to
abandon the worldly knowledge, the attachment to purpose, the usual. I
tried to experience the experience for what it is. But what is it?
Perhaps this
is what it is.
In my
struggle, I struggled. I struggled to see the enlightenment, and I
struggled to let it go.
Did I want
control? Or none at all?
Is this the
purpose, of purposelessness?
My mind
wavered, as I tried to float through my abandonment of what I know.
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This piece
documents and illustrates the artist’s intention to experience a meditative way
of living – by being present. This meditative state arises when one is
able to experience an action or activity for what it is. In other words,
the purpose behind an action is simply the action itself, nothing else.
The artist sought to abandon his agenda, representing knowledge and the
intellectual, to go back to his purest existence.
The lines
drawn are themselves a record of this process and abandonment. Every line
is drawn freehand, and in the drawing of each line the artist’s focus is on
experiencing the drawing of the line itself. The simplicity of this
experience carries the complexity of his overall message. The artist
sought to explore, through the creation of this piece, what it means to be
truly present in a moment – the immediacy of movement, the irreversibility of
each breath, the intricacies in the interaction between our minds and our
bodies.
The piece also shows
the struggles that the artist faced in his exploration of his purest self,
alluding to the impossibility of absolute presence, or perhaps to the reality
of being human. In his concentration in this meditative state, the artist
found that absolute alignment between the mind and the body, and between the
conscious and the subconscious, was not possible and the attempt created
unavoidable tensions. His mind was unable to gain full control of his
body. Simultaneously, the intended ‘purposelessness’ of his action began
to simmer, shedding light on an inevitable contradiction: whether the
‘purposelessness’ of his work actually then creates purpose.