Hanzi Transformation
Between Calligraphy and Research
The Chinese characters are composed of 30 elementary brush strokes. By combining them, an almost infinite variety of characters unfolds. Initially, each of the more than 50,000 known characters (hanzi) carries its meaning as a pictogram. But from most of today's characters, the depicted object is no longer recognizable. In order to overcome this drawback i put up the hypothesis that the image of a person or an object could be transformed into a new character by stepwise abstraction, immersing both the essence of the depicted and the rules of the chinese alphabet.
I used the technique of chinese calligraphy to test this hypothesis. Black ink rubbed from a pigment stone was applied from a vertical brush in a single stroke. This technique demands the painted line to flow fluently from the calligraphers hand, thus excluding predrawn lines and corrections. By slowly solving the aromatic ink, the painter achieves a meditative state well-suited for the task.
Motives were intentionally selected for which no chinese character existed in the dictionaries yet: My colleague E.M, the Brandenburg gate, myoglobin, Professor C.F. and others. The hanzi transformation resulted in a spectrum of abstraction levels also found in asian art: Besides the full transformation into a character, one-stroke calligraphies similar to the xie-yi-style were achieved. By selective use of unbroken colour, several motives were depicted as decorative paintings.