谷园 Gu Garden (2008-Now)

2008年，郑国谷回到当年出生的地方，离阳江三十多公里的阳西程村，近乎荒废的故居触动了他尝试重新恢复居住场所的念头。程村如今已成为工业小镇，只有最老的一条小街还保留着当年的样子。故居正坐落于老街，从二楼的阳台上可以看到老街上人们生活如常，似乎并没有经受外界太多的冲击。

最初几年，郑国谷将老屋弃用的猪圈改造成一个舞台，郑国谷的父亲郑道兴和他的私伙局得以在这儿排练、演出，人气渐入。从2018年开始，带有小金字塔的玻璃亭开始进入院落，继而出现在房顶。游鱼、池水、柳树、黑骨茶树在慢慢调节院落的气息，人行通道以架桥的方式依着老屋的建筑形态伸展，如藤蔓般沿墙攀延，渐至四通八达，而又曲径通幽，行走其间如同漫步于峰回路转的园林。

郑国谷将它命名为“谷园”，这是继“了园”之后的另一个“园”。“谷”字既有人们所熟悉的稻谷的含义，点出“园”所处的村落情境；又暗合了郑国谷名字中的“谷”。如果说，每个名字都会带来相应音频的振动波，那么，郑国谷将“谷园”这个名字的音频振动和他在创作中所探测的“心轮”感受联系了起来。

“谷园”无疑吸收了郑国谷多年来在“了园”探索的经验，但并不重复“了园”的形式，而是将“了园”中所获得的对居住生态的理解和感受转换、移植到人们所遗忘的村落日常空间，从而唤起对村落生活空间的重新想象，同时也是对人类理想的另类生活场所的探讨。面对村舍特有的生活空间群落，郑国谷发展出一种更为立体的结构：同样有茶、树、池、鱼的环境要素，但通过“借景”、“叠景”、流动的廊和桥，身处其间的感受层次会变得更加绵密和交融。

In 2008, Zheng Guogu returned to his birthplace Chengcun in Yangxi, some 30 kilometers from the city of Yangjiang. The derelict former home led him to consider restoring it. Chengcun has now become an industrial town, with its oldest street remaining what it looked like in the past, where his home is located. Observing from the balcony on the second floor, people’s life on the street seems to be as it has always been without too much impact from the outside world; the old building also appears to be sealed in time from the late 1970s.

Zheng Guogu converted the disused pigsty in the building into a stage for the first few years, where his father Zheng Daoxing and his Cantonese opera band could gather to rehearse and perform, and the place was becoming lively. Since 2018, a glass pavilion with a golden pyramid was built in the courtyard, then another one on the rooftop. Swimming fish, pond, willow, and other trees are slowly altering the atmosphere of the courtyard. Passages extend along with the architectural form of the old building, climbing upon the walls like a twisting vine that leads to all directions and secluded corners, as if they were the winding paths in a Chinese garden.

Zheng Guogu named it Gu Garden. “Gu” in Chinese has the meaning of “grain”, implicating the context of the village where this garden is situated; it also corresponds to the word “Gu” in Zheng Guogu’s name. “Every name brings a specific vibration”, Zheng Guogu associated the sonic vibration of the name “Gu Garden” with the heart chakra detected in his artwork Visionary World in a Changing State of Mind.

Without doubt, Gu Garden has assimilated Zheng Guogu’s years of experience and  exploration at Liao Garden without repeating the form, instead, it has transformed and replanted the understanding and awareness of a living ecosystem acquired in Liao Garden into a daily space in a village, in order to evoke a re-imagining of village living spaces envisioned by human’s wisdom in the historical process. In response to the limited living space characteristic of these types of village houses, Zheng Guogu developed a structure that is more three-dimensional: to echo with Liao Garden, it also has the elements of tea, tree, pond, fish in its environment, but its layers of perceptions are denser and more blended with the principle of “borrowed sceneries” and “folded sceneries”.