The Extended Meaning of Multiplicated Images

By Shen Keng  Li

The Double Meaning of Transboundary

In order to define something, we first need to say what it is! Is it Contemporary Ink Art? Or Contemporary Art? The concept of the term “Contemporary Ink Art” has seldom been mentioned and analyzed. Although the term often appears in art reviews and exhibitions, its use is often limited to the literal meaning or metaphoric pictorial presentation of the term. The contemporary ink art we talk about is just like any other words of a similar nature, just an over-analyzed explanation limited to a literal meaning.

The unique quality of contemporary art work is that artists crossover different professional fields and various unusual media, handling several complex structures at the same time. Lin Bao Ling’s works blur an audience's impression of the boundaries of art. This is a result of his creative background, which crosses over between western art and eastern ink art. We cannot study Lin’s works as a singular aesthetic concept just because of his poetic use of light and shadow. Due to a lack of clear space between us and the work, it is hard to build a method to rationally view Lin’s works at this time.

Therefore, I try to decongest the tugging and overlapping problem that Lin faces between being a contemporary ink artist and someone who was raised with a background in contemporary art and creative logic. At this crossover juncture, Lin builds the tension between the objective structure and the subjective reception. From this point, he links particular forms of literary writing and personal experience through the various artworks his experienced ideology is able to embody.

The Comprehensive Experience of Flatness

Lin Bao Ling’s artwork crosses-over two different ways of recording detailed images with three-dimensional extraction before converting them into two-dimensions, deepening our ability to imagine a body of space. This method presents the relationship formed between the artist’s own thoughts and his experience of the outside world. . Most of the audience familiar with his works often overlook how much emphasis Lin places on the way in which his subjects are set. First, he sees the structure of the scene as a situation or process, then he defines it as a movement of a sensual and imaginative work through photography. This style of movement affects the way Lin photographs before painting. He focuses on the scenes with the subject and captures parts of the scenes.

Photography can make things that are not easily visible to the naked eye stand out from details. It can freely switch between viewpoints and different angles. Through zooming in and out or adjusting the shutter speed, it also captures truths that could be overlooked by observation. Lin Bao Ling mixes structures in transformation with the movement between structures together, grafting the memories of his time doing photography and integrating it with his style and tools now. He uses colors to view and inspect the structure of the form and re-assemble the themes, content, style and techniques; thus, providing “space” on a two-dimensional painting. Perhaps we are prevented from completely entering this deep and dark space because of the fact that the moment captured in the piece is different from that at which it was photographed. It instead brings out our memory and experience. In terms of style, this space is more active than the audience because it makes us face the fact that the scene in the painting might no longer exist.

Other than collecting materials through photography, the use of multi-media vellum instead of the traditional canvas is also one of Lin Bao Ling’s distinguishing methods. After his experience at an artist village in the U.S. in 2011, Lin began using this material. Multi-media vellum is a half-transparent material used by architects to draw sketches. It can be used repeatedly or colored with ink. Drawings appear clear on this material. It is also easy to draw on with high stability. Moreover, it's physical properties mean that it will not be affected by humidity, tearing or reshaping. The material can withstand abrasion and folding, and is easy to store.

Due to the low hydrophilic property of the plastic material the multi-media vellum is made of, paint does not apply well and can flow around freely on the surface. The paint splashed on multi-media vellum is flattened on a flat surface. Through pressure and changing the form, it creates a scene that expands with the bleeding of the paint. The areas of freely moving paint deconstruct the singular two-dimensional painting of straight lines, curves or circles made with rulers and angles. Lin Bao Ling utilizes the way that these lines freely flow on the multi-media vellum to create different layers of areas with bleeding paint; thus, he can open up depth from every layer. Perhaps the areas or continuation of these deep spaces can go on to recreate on their own.

Non-Linear Structure of the Space 

Structure and the deconstruction of lights, movements or slow-moving shadows are all characteristics of Lin Bao Ling’s works. He once mentioned that his works consists of blurred landscapes and objects made with ever-changing lights and shadows. He hopes to present a spiritual atmosphere, inner feelings and even truths behind things we once made assumptions of. He explains that such symbolic darkness and light are like exhibiting indefiniteness and transience. The “abstractness” Lin wants to capture is not the portrayal of lights, brightness, shadows, reflections and colors, but rather the positive space opened up by these two-dimensional layers. If we can observe Lin’s works by seeing through their thicknesses, we can find out  that the scenes are made of layers of various sizes through different angles and distances. There is not merely one simple way to view these images. The misplaced obstructions between layers are hidden from the visual guidance of normal vision. They cancel out the reversible figures amongst themselves, then draw forth the negative space; thus, creating the phenomenon of depth within the third dimension. The artist erased the traditional obstacles of linear perspective and manipulated two-dimensionality and the audience’s viewing experience by manually constructing his own three-dimensional viewing perspective. He added moving patterns from the wiping, pushing and flowing of the paint; therefore, opening up a multi-dimensional space on a flat object.

Viewing after Opening up Visual Experience 

Overcoming the problems of traditional Chinese ink is already meaningless for Lin Bao Ling’s artistic generation. He is familiar with various methods of creation, including the materials he uses, the styles he has inherited, the continuation of tradition and the subjects which are chosen for him or he chooses for himself. Lin spends time probing the essence of his work, existence, imagination, reality, things that can be seen or not seen. His works have a kind of polarized dialectical relationship due to his unique crossover between photography and painting. From three-dimensional photography to two-dimensional painting, the viewing experience comes from their own feedback. They repeat the past and present visual experiences. Lin does not just repeat familiar images in the scene, but rather makes us feel our lives are present in his works. He sees things that are not present with the way he sees real things. Through “The Imaginary", “The symbolic”, and “The Real” time in painting, Lin hints at the changes in flatness; thus, making his works an art that transposes the levels of space.