Chinese characters are the only writing system among the four ancient civilizations that remains in continuous use today. Hanzi Gong (The Palace of Chinese Characters) draws inspiration from the 1716 Kangxi Dictionary, approaching it not only as a linguistic source, but as a civilizational archive of Chinese writing. The project selects 18,046 characters and organizes them into 50 radicals. Through a method of layered deconstruction, the project unfolds into 51 cross-disciplinary artworks.
Each work is composed of hundreds of linear, outlined character structures woven together into dense and intricate spatial formations. Here, Chinese characters are stripped of their communicative function, destabilizing the traditional human-centered mode of interpretation. Through a way of seeing in which absence reveals presence, the viewer shifts from spectator to observer, witnessing the sensory expansion of characters as they reclaim their subjecthood.
This is a confrontation over the power to define. Chinese characters are reimagined as living entities that coexist with natural laws: their external strokes fluctuate with emotional intensity, reflecting the transience of life, while their internal structures remain constant, sustaining the order of civilization. No longer mere tools of signification, they become projections of the human condition, probing the boundary between change and permanence.
As this vitality expands to its extreme and visual density reaches a critical threshold, established meanings begin to dissolve. Once precise instruments of communication, characters are transformed into geometric frameworks that resist interpretation, compelling us to release our rational attachment to meaning. Within the pure rhythm of lines, the viewer is invited to rediscover a sensory resonance that transcends language, returning to the roots of visual perception.
Hanzi Gong unfolds through five states — Sentience, Rhythm, Resonance, Pulse, and Flux — forming a system suspended between characters, life, and visual experience. Rather than tracing the historical evolution of Chinese characters, the work approaches radicals as living forces through which characters shift between language, structure, sensation, and abstraction. Here, writing is no longer treated as a fixed vehicle of meaning, but as a living system through which memory, knowledge, and form are continually reorganized.
The work’s structures, at times sparse and at times dense, do not point toward a linear order of evolution. Instead, they reveal the continuously shifting life of the character system from within. The varying number of characters associated with different radicals and components generates uneven fluctuations in visual density, while the gathering, displacement, and layering of structures continually reconfigure the internal relationships between characters. Ultimately, Chinese characters form a perceptual field no longer dependent on reading, but grounded in visual experience itself.
Display Method
Hanzi Gong is conceived as a print-based spatial installation of 51 works. When presented in full, the works form an archival wall arranged by the stroke count of the radicals, translating the Kangxi Dictionary’s internal logic into spatial structure. Depending on the exhibition space, the work may also be presented through selected series or a site-responsive configuration.
Full:
https://www.behance.net/gallery/132494801/Hanzi-Gong
