I.
Qin Yifeng’s works on negative film, created while using restrained technical parameters, turn many levels of movement and acts of destruction into a stream of sounds that flows across flat surfaces. Art wrestles with social dilemmas, fusing together patterns of radiation that, when drawn out from its critical vision, can sweep away the influence of pernicious political consensus and overturn mundane critical viewpoints. You may or may not be surprised while watching and rewatching. Listen to the color of gray and the stillness. Dread creeps in through the delicate, ever-changing flow. Technically speaking, Qin Yifeng’s works on negative film present four contradictions: a) The object of these photos is Ming-dynasty-era furniture—in pieces and parts. On their surfaces, we see traces of wood grain, delicate carved lines, signs of use or abuse, and natural weathering. Even as their main theme concerns destruction, they construct a fortuitous historical space that contrasts with the hard, noisy spaces that they share with the larger art world.
b) The pieces of furniture selected by Qin Yifeng are products of the cooperation between the scholars and craftsmen of the Ming dynasty in their design, shape, and construction. The final form of the furniture realized the promise of the flat and supporting parts. The furniture then underwent all kinds of social or personal uses, getting worn, scratched, and even broken as they circulated and were sought after madly, repaired poorly, and collected as high-priced antiques. This process includes Qin Yifeng’s pictures of the furniture, which compose a kind of intertext. If we compare these pictures to literary works, then we might say that Qin Yifeng prefers to give voice to the unknown author, rather than stick to the staid words of famous writers.
c) Qin Yifeng uses a camera, but does not make photography. His pictures eliminate perspective and separation, placing the near, the distant, and the gray background on the same gray, flat surface. He uses a Sinar P2 monorail studio camera and a Schneider lens as his tools to resist photographic effects. As he sits and waits for the sun to shine, the object being photographed will swallow its own shadow, creating an eclipse in which the object projects only itself. What is captured on film leaves no evidence of the process.
d) In the geometric figures presented in these negatives, the lines cut across the strictly logical conditions of their creation and daily use. The lines and surfaces on the objects in the pictures take on the role of analyzing the stories of the furniture and its users. It should be the case that, having found a technology that works against technology, the artist invites the abstract and the figurative to overlap calmly on an unnatural plane.
II.
Wood and stone are innocent. The combination of stone and the authority of writing gave rise to calligraphic copying, a tradition that marks a point of difference between Chinese and Western cultures. Both wood and humans will decay; someone like me identifies with their decay. Wood, however, will never slow human beings’ aging. At the same time, human sight, physical strength, and violence permeate the wood and occupy its decayed spaces. People may have something to entrust in others, but not in the wood. We use or watch the wooden furniture and find that things and people cannot escape decay and replacement. Standing in front of furniture that has been fortunate enough to survive, we are entranced in thought that people in a different time said farewell to these objects with satisfaction. Qin Yifeng has no opportunity for or interest in becoming emotional while thinking of the laws of nature. The original wood from the Ming dynasty can no longer be seen. This original wood survives nicely in the form of furniture, which once inspired the scholar to consult with the craftsman. We can imagine how they walked in slow steps around the finished furniture, enjoying the same warmth and beauty. People in the Ming dynasty perfected the style of furniture from Song dynasty (which itself had simplified the furniture designs of the Yuan dynasty), thereby and wiping out all redundant decoration. This Baroque style was enhanced to make functional arrangements of lines. In the furniture in Song dynasty, strong, column-like legs create a stout appearance. In the furniture of Ming dynasty, the arcing lines of the legs compose an elegant but surprising sturdiness. It is no doubt that the smaller size of Ming furniture compared to Yuan furniture did not indicate a distate for stoutness or a preference for the excessively delicate tastes of the Song dynasty. To the contrary, Ming furniture brought a plain, stout strength into the fullness of flat surfaces. The socalled modesty of this furniture is found in its full, flat shapes. Some people confuse the simplicity of Ming furniture with an impoverished style, but this opinion only reveals a mistaken understanding of the larger transformations that took place across the centuries. The late Ming dynasty was a time when classical thought fell into deep decline, and scholars began to oppose orthodoxy and to seek reform and transformation. Their writings were covered with blood and bone fragments. For a time, late-Ming furniture was not influenced by these happenings, but it was eventually drawn into the larger withering and decline. Most of the subjects Qin Yifeng selected were tables used by scholars or painters of the Ming. This wooden furniture shared in the decay of human body and the destruction of knowledge. In 2013/9/7, Cloudy, in the light gray part of the surface, some of the woodgrain can be seen to extend sluggishly into the cloud-like thickness. The light color in the negative film is just the dark color in the positive. As Qin Yifeng inverts the colors, what had been held in the dark is now exposed in the light: no tracks were left by the scholars or painters, which is astonishing. The deepest layer, when seen in the negative film, is scrupulously clean. In the gray-black depths of the picture, the marks made by chopping and etching accumulate into a heavy layer that looks like a root system. Qin Yifeng lowered this layer a bit, but did not conceal it. His work verified that nothing could be covered by anything else, and the outer layer emphasized the value of what had been covered over. The place that has this layer of marks and scratches is so mildly worn. How slight were the writing brushes and the movements that accompanied them? Here, then, we see the literati and craftsmen of the Ming dynasty speak only through the pieces of furniture, in the choice of wood, in style and design, and in the arrangements and ratios of space; here they expressed their judgment on the world and on life.
The shape of these pieces of furniture drew from larger ideas about life and shelter held by people in the Ming dynasty. These, in turn, determined how Qin Yifeng arranged the surface of his pictures. The functional lines of the subjects of the pictures, which had turned away from the purpose of daily use, is displayed precisely and without distortion. In fact, the arrangement and position of the objects within a limited range of the negative film is just right. These works follow the doctrine of the contemporary art that holds that documentation is more important than expression and shows that the documentary value of the pieces lies in the layers of their surface. The structure of Ming-dynasty furniture enables the composition of pictures in negative film. The size of the furniture or its parts, the precise cuts in the wood, and the forceful yet unobtrusive joining of the mortise and the tenon provide the complete framework which Qin Yifeng needs to arrange his composition. This framework, however, is not limited by the need to distribute particular details across the surface of the image.
I have pointed out that the classical thought came to an end in the along with the end of the Ming dynasty. But the framework of the classical thought remained, which can be sensed in the work 2013/9/14, Cloudy: something has disappeared in the upper left corner. The lower inside rail, off kilter, joins the left-hand corner of the horizontal piece of wood. This corner, bent like a bow drawn by an invisible string, presents a small but surprising scene of grandeur.
Qin Yifeng can also tell stories. In 2013/12/5, Cloudy, he embeds the original tabletop in the middle of the picture and shows the damaged but sturdy frame, which matches with the sturdy legs. Here the slogan “Chinese learning for the essence, and Western learning for its utility” put forward by people in the Qing dynasty is reproached. The organization and system symbolized by Ming furniture seems to have fallen to pieces, and any plan or method to repair it will create an eyesore or lead to conflict. But the mortise and the tenon, which have not decayed, connect with one another in a way that is unable to depart from an older worldview in which all things are equal to one another and cannot be divided along the lines of essence and utility. Wood lies in wood, and, within that wood, more wood. As each piece of the assemblage changes with each other piece, the wood identifies with each other part of the organization. No other theory about organizations or groups has ever permeated them or convinced them to be otherwise.
Even as an alienated mode of sentiment and feeling, pieced together after the collapse of clan and family brought on by population policies and labor migration, continues to face new challenges, people still try to establish a core cultural consciousness through blood relationships, a consciousness that helps one to deal with the obstacles and move forward. So the flat head of the table leg in 2014/4/14, Sunny and the arc-shaped body of the legs in 2014/4/16, Overcastsubtly point to an impressive but hidden or unrealized strength. The remnants of fabric seen in 2013/4/20, Rainy points to the complete weaving found in 2013/9/30, Cloudy. The reversal of a narrative of decline across time accords with the imagination. Rain falls upon the clouds, and the cloud split apart to make more rain. The works from 2014/10/8 to 2014/10/10 seem to sing out in a low voice. The lovely, rippling lines allow the shape to take on a contented, even tipsy feel. That is exactly what the poet Qin Shaoyou (1049-1100) described: “Tiny clouds painted on the hill, barren grass spreads out under the sky.”
III.
Qin Yifeng originally was an abstract artist. The knowledge and practice of Chinese calligraphy guides him to wander through the pieces in these photographs. His sense of flatness showed in the negative film relates to this abstract painting. In his abstract paintings, lines fabricate the space and segment the flat. In negative film, the distance between the flat background and the subject is compressed to the minimum or to nothing at all. The purpose of doing so is to equate each element. One can analyze the geometric structure, and this mathematical reasoning may help in appreciating the works, but it cannot explain the artist’s extreme honesty. Here, Qin Yifeng presents these lines and surfaces that come from round and square shapes; but these lines, surfaces, and shapes were also provided by people from the Ming dynasty. The meaning of the works has been changed, even through the completely faithful representation that Qin Yifeng has made of them. He sent his praise to the craftsmen through his presentation of these lines, breaking up the myth that the artist must dominate the artwork. Each element presented here shows an agreement reached by creators of different generations. The essence of this cooperation is found in the tacit understanding of ratio. It may help us to understand Qin Yifeng’s idea about creativity if we tell the story in reverse order: Qin Yifeng offered drafts of the furniture, and people from the Ming dynasty accepted his idea and made the furniture accordingly. The creators lived in different time and did not know each other’s names. But the creators can be seen as the same person. The friendly, mutual action leads to a meeting of spirits. They all agreed to collective, unconscious depictions: quiet dirt, daily worrying, outbursts of emotion, adapting to the grind of ordinary family life.
As I mentioned above, Qin’s way of composing within the frame maintains an abstract visual effect. The subject and the layers on it dissolve the limit between the abstract and the figurative. The redefinition brings about a polluted purity; decorations do not need to hang on the wall, and the polluted still can be pleasing to the eye. The people who made cuts or scratches on the subjects of these pictures cannot be identified. Messages left on the furniture follow a different grammar. I want to point out specifically: whether the heated words found in these subjects conveyed determination, horror, or helplessness, everything on the equally flat plane can be accepted, if not understood. Even what is stored in a museum is filled with harsh feelings, tall tales, jokes, and laughter. Fragments and shards are placed in an elaborate display that densely cover real events and messages of warning.
IV.
One part of the contribution made by Ming furniture is the geometric structures of their designs, which record the daily lives, fluctuating emotions, and the comings and goings of hosts and guests of widely varying status. These old pieces of furniture are like wood that has not yet been made into magical paper talismans, or like a long-lived courtesan. Anyone could take the chance to try his hand, and it responded truthfully to anyone’s reaction. The reaction of the users might not come from the furniture: a business deal, a relative or friend, an obituary, an opera performance, a gust of wind, a cup of wine—all could touch someone in silence. Of course, regardless of outside circumstances, one might also choose to show consideration for the furniture. Anything on the furniture, such as a vivid form or image, a loose joint, a conciliatory gesture, an intensified misunderstanding, hostility (whether right or wrong), has been accepted. Unlike shiny lacquerware, which possesses the mirror’s sexless reproductive power, the plain wooden furniture can accept without question any vigorous ejaculation, but it does not give birth. People were felt assured enough to try their hand freely without worrying about the consequences. Every action would turned to the unconscious, no matter how it came about or how it was restrained.
Each form of unconsciousness has its unique symptoms. Look at 2012/11/11, Sunny. The faint scratches, which appear near the middle of both sides of the subject (particularly on the left), look like tracks left by unknown creatures. Teardrop stains, like clusters of stars, gather and disperse. Indeed, the faint scratches and stains should correspond to some form of resonant romance and beauty that resides in the moth hole. The person who has traded out his humanity several times is apt to draw conclusions from these tiny traces. The imagination sketches out romantic stories, drawing something out of nothing when facing these pieces of furniture. Human beings aren’t made of wood, and the different experiences of each person lead them to different ways to turn a blind eye toward what they see. Qin Yifeng’s negative film forces the viewer to open closed eyes to reach a balance between what the viewer wants to see or refuses to see. The same object appears in multiple works, each with a different angle or focus. In one piece, only the left part of the object is focused. Thick traces in the middle match with the thin traces in the lower center-left part. The traces demonstrate that the furniture has changed hands. The transfer is jarring, even if it is likely that one set of hands inherited from the other. Regardless of who did what, the traces of files and hammers show how their hands have altered the piece violently (see the upward-curving line that begins on the lower right); these parts of the pictures are just like the images on X-ray film of bone joined to bone. This image forms a negativity that grows out of its own language system, which operates according to the rules of cutting and joining. In this process, pieces of furniture originally made by one or two craftsmen pass beyond of the realm of our speculation. A workbench damaged through work unexpectedly becomes exciting at a time when knowledge, culture and education have been anesthetized by ubiquitous and inescapable concepts and ideas. So dry eyes look forward to seeing the destructive power of strange art. So that’s how it is! The precious furniture of the Ming contains some of this destructive power, but does not enlarge it.
Artists cannot confuse their work with the work of craftsmen or laborers, even if all three groups must practice their skills while they share in the contempt handed down to them by their fellow (but more upright) citizens who, in turn, can use any of their works to decorate their walls. Unlike the others, the artist always plays the role of presenting the deceiving truth. The artist lives in degradation, making visible the world that should be, offering contradiction to the world as it is. Therefore, it is at their own peril that artists adopt the language of the craftsman and the laborer. The hierarchy built into interpersonal relationships can hardly be mitigated by sitting in seats of the same height; to deny this is self-deception. It is even more difficult to overcome the problem of who speaks for whom: Who gives permission to put these things on display?
Qin Yifeng is not troubled by these questions. He uses the negative film to make a record of the furniture, to show the difference between front and back, to experience the scene where those who might speak for this furniture invited each other to sit close together. Everyone remains anonymous. Whether now or in ancient times, art is always straightforward. It acknowledges evidence and degrees of strength, and the craftsman materializes the artist’s conception. The life taken on by the furniture contains the spirit by which the artist can live on in this world. Like a surrogate who lends the womb, the craftsman gives birth to others’ works in wood; like real mothers, the craftsman seeks perfection. The damage, disintegration and disappearance of this perfected body becomes the framework for a larger story of decline and decay. In the frameworks of these tables and chairs, which can be viewed solely for their beauty or utility, we indeed see that the noble and pure are indeed noble and pure, but we also hear distant, indistinct sound. The stage on which these scenes play out leaves room for this unintelligible profundity, and the performance assigns meaning to the real things in front of us. The flat surfaces present us with the selective amnesia that separates you and me; these surfaces may also bring out another version of me that sees what I do not see through my own eyes.
In a place where the rule of first-come, first-served is permitted, a radio play is on the air. Various trails overlaid on the surface of the wood do not keep the wood or the marks on them from recording what is real and true. The intercrossing and the overlaying lines highlight what is shared, but it is not difficult to distinguish the different layers if you pay attention to the shape of the different trails and traces. The contrast and dialogue between the traces reveal their differences of rank and order and take on a new syntax of imagination. The wood is not a mirror, but each trace is a mirror that reflects another trace on the flat, leveled plane. The point lies not in the objectivity of the display but in highlighting the scenes of entanglement and uncontrolled excitement. The ending or sudden stopping of all things leads to a stillness and return to continuing life. Qing Yifeng exercises great restraint; he takes part in, but does not disturb, the peaceful gathering. He understands its language, and therefore both preserves its frames of reference through exact displays that, in turn, can only be made through those very same frames of reference. He refuses to indulge in ordinary romantic emotion.
In the marks that cross these frames of reference, scratches and impressions left by everyday life and, in dark times, emotional outbursts, cover one another. Even these, however, have to face the limited life of the wood. The cracks and decay on the top of the bench and the ragged joint where it meets its legs in 2013/11/15, Clear seem to dovetail with the stubborn entanglement of wood in 2013/12/7, Foggy and then turn toward the natural ending of the lower part of a furniture leg in 2013/10/9, Partly Cloudy. Is it not the case that the wood was responding to itself in all of these beautiful configurations and intertwined fates? The remains of wood are dry and barren but also extraordinary. Give thanks to them. The commiseration among the owners of the furniture ensures the preservation of many frames of reference, considering carefully their limits and their transience.
V.
Ming furniture happens to be made in China. Compared with similar items from Europe, they are more pleasing to the eye and easier to use. Likewise, the Sinar P2 camera, Schneider lens, and Ilford Delta 100 film, all products of the finest in European optics, can capture their subject better than equipment made in Far East. Qin Yifeng found the perfect match after repeated attempts; he uses what is now seen as traditional equipment to create new art. Different from the paintbrush, the monorail studio camera banishes randomness. Qin Yifeng, therefore, has exercised stricter control over himself in this work than in his painting. His restrictive practice is far different from photographers who specialize in imaging techniques. To these photographers, the object exists in name only. The use-value they gain from images can only point to the surplus value in their work, which is probably not worth keeping. What is found in their imaging is often just another way to define existing concepts. As a result, their work is often weak and unable to stand on its own. However, Qin Yifeng eliminates the possibility of restoring original spaces and passes by the usual route of entry taken in making pictures. He records what was left on the flat surface without comment and never promises to bring back to life the chaos of history. He does not allow for the illusion of placing himself in the position of the viewer. In compressing the distance between the foreground and background, not all pictures may achieve a complete leveling. But flat is flat, and there is no intention of going back.
Qin Yifeng limits the large lens’s area of focus to roughly five degrees outside the center of the subject and distributes the level of resolution equally in all directions, thereby ensuring that the corners of the object, which are often positioned in front of the lens—as in 2014/2/23 Rain, where the corners are placed directly in front of the camera, and the lines of tabletop’s edge and the diagonal line of the table leg, separated by one layer, combine to form a straight line—escape segmentation, so that the discontinuity in the gray level on the surrounding areas serves to allow the resolution to begin from the flat surface. The image on the negative film is presented through pixels. For Qin Yifeng, the pixel indicates the equal distribution of the total resolution. It also indicates the tendency of black to emit light in terms of the grayscale sequence. The visual sense (of the object and the strength or weakness of its brightness) and the weaker resolution are balanced by his basic idea of “leveling.” The intention of leveling, which also can be called the grammar of leveling, is to eliminate in principle all unevenness or depth. Often Qin Yifeng will make double exposures, which controls the gray level over time and levels the gray of the background. These methods look like he is supplementing that which forms the basis of the work, but, in fact, the result is a full realization of that basis. The process from deep black to pure white assumes differing proportions of luminance. It actually means that color of black is emitting various level of gray that analyze themselves. However, the gray level (or luminance) is restrained by the leveling of the surface. This leveling is the fundamental principle, and the gray leveling is its syntax. The gray leveling extends to each aspect of the construction and forces the image to be leveled on film rather than on the flat gray background. The principle at work—which, without provoking shock or fear, seems to give birth to and take back everything—emerges through the flatness on the film. No image on the film appears randomly.
Fine, then. Time will help certain qualities to fill out the scale and perfect the space. Time depends on the living to continue, just as the living are subject to a rate of decay. Anything which will decay is subject to nature and cannot avoid the fate of being replaced. The staid furniture of the Ming dynasty has been replaced, just as the staid, single-lens reflex camera has also been replaced, even as those who love the latter are still improving it to sharpen its sensitivity. The SLR camera captures the image of an object on the back focus and on the focal plane simultaneously, and assumes a focus in front of the focal plane. As a result, the body of the camera and the reflector are bulky because of the camera’s complicated structure. Eventually, the SLR was replaced by rangefinder cameras and auto-focus cameras. The quality of images made by pointing and shooting is guaranteed through automatically adjusting parameters. Qin Yifeng chooses both Ming furniture and SLR cameras because their technological designs produce areas of vagueness that allow intuition to enter. It is a bit strange that the camera aperture is full of light from windows from two sides or three sides. Indistinct and graceful air floats between lens and object. Only intuition can go through the air without being disturbed. Qin Yifeng does not worry: the light filtered through the layers of haze, air currents, and window glass as if it filtered through three layers of promise. Together with the wood of Ming-dynasty furniture, the metal and plastic of the camera, it shares the natural decay. In the fuzziness—or a certain resolution ratio—we can see the intimate pacification of the viewer granted by the precise degrees of grayscale.
Due to the strict grayscale, Qin Yifeng’s negative film works can upstage almost any other works of art. The grayscale of his negative film prints range from 95 and 18, but most are between 85 and 75. The part most similar to white in the negative film roughly equals the average grayscale of things in nature, but the average grayscale on Qin Yifeng’s negative film prints is four times darker than that of things in natural world. Brighter objects generate greater stress when seen, while darker objects stimulate a greater desire to see. If we regard the pure black as a kind of fullness, then the luminance thrown off from it should be seen as directed toward symmetrical meanings that are emitted from the nothingness of pure white, which, in Qin Yifeng’s negative film prints, emits only a quarter of that which is found in nature. The grayscale of things in nature lies outside what found on Qin Yifeng’s negative film prints: with an average luminance of 18, the shape and details of things in nature appear clearly, and the stress of seeing them turns to terror and boredom immediately. The range of grayscale in the negative film is narrow and consistent, and even by emitting a small amount of light, it can generate something that draws you in. Like the drill head driven by a hidden power, our sight advances courageously. It has been always been the case that artful art is superior to the unaltered things in nature. The images are to thoughtful and considerate. They tell you that your searching in the greenhouse will lead you beyond yourself. You are as same as what is captured on film, emitting toward the blank white.
The black contains images and meaning. Qin Yifeng forces the black to project a flat surface without depth. The shape and meaning result from a combination of different levels of brightness. Qin Yifeng uses the method of gray levelling to drive out any illusory profundity. Like Chinese calligraphy, only dot, line and ink are left on the paper. Nothing false appears on the paper. The uneven gray on the negative film can be seen as uneven ink marks. The dot just means a dot, the line is just a line. Association or metaphors are turned away. The object in the film is just color—one of the five colors of Chinese ink. The color can be thought to be unreal. In another words, the flat surface is not a stage hung on the wall to that invites people to imagine themselves performing within the image. For example, why act as Qin Yifeng? Just act following the camera’s movement, following the movement of the pieces of furniture. Take a bath while the water is warm, or drive on a familiar road in the dark. Qin Yifeng studies and employs the craftsmen and painters of Ming dynasty, but he never plays the part of these craftsmen or painters. Like these anonymous persons, he also works hard to achieve perfection. He is against repetition. The perfection also means: the average grayscale of the wood of the existing Ming furniture is about 75, the degree the black color absorbs the brightness of Ming wood. The grayscale of most of negative film is between 85 and 75, the degree the black color releases the object. The degree of decay of the wood nearly equals the distance between the starting point of Qin Yifeng and the ink on the film. In 2013/9/13, Thunderstorm, the bottom line of the frame and the bottom line of the negative image are synchronized. Two lines and patches on the frame are vigorous and firm. The wild gray levelling above the frame is extremely flat. How elegant they are. You will begin to feel timid if you watch for a long time . Fear creeps into the smooth, flat stream of sounds.
