了园 Liao Garden (2012-Now)

关于“了园”和在此之前的“帝国时代”的故事，可追溯到新千年伊始，郑国谷在阳江城郊遭遇一片土地；2005年，郑国谷在这片土地上开始他起初名为 “帝国时代”的建造。就像《帝国时代》这个电脑游戏一样，他为“帝国时代”挖河造山，种树植屋，但现实中的“帝国时代”融合了更为复杂的空间形态和社会关系，它不是在特定场所的景观性作品，而是延伸到真实的生活情境里的项目，包容了一个空间从理想到实现以及在生活中持续的全部过程。

从2012年开始，他将“帝国时代”改名为“了园”。“了园”继续其与前身“帝国时代”的未了之缘，但已蕴含了新的能量学的意韵，正如郑国谷在信息量浓缩的自述中所论及的：

从扩张的“帝国时代”到注重感知的“了园”，说明了它正向另一种审美骤变，一种有别于符号学的审美，它是一种土地能量学的审美。这种审美让一个艺术家的意识与定力在大地上深深地扎根，与隐藏在大地的各种各样的能量聚集点对接，相互响应，让现实的矛盾在现实中互相中计，并顺利产生灵感。

从“帝国时代”到“了园”，日常空间和艺术空间之间的转换在郑国谷的日常实践中永不停息地展开；而他的创作，在测试着周遭生存能量的同时，也成为在这充盈的感知流动中不断折射出来的晶体，让我们思考：如何有可能消弥我们在当代所习惯的个人创造者的身份，而回到创造本身，回到存在本身?

The story of “Liao Garden” and the previous working process of “The Age of Empire” can be traced back to the beginning of the new millennium, when Zheng Guogu encountered a piece of land in the suburb of his hometown Yangjiang.  By 2005, when he started the construction of The Age of Empire, the piece of land had been continually expanding. He dug canals and built mountains, planted trees and built houses, just like playing the computer game Age of Empires, but the “Empire” in the real world incorporates more complicated spatial forms and social relations. “Liao Garden” is not just a site-specific, spectacular work, but a project that has extended into real life situations, including the entire process from the conception to the realization of the space, and its sustenance in real life.

Since 2012, he changed the name from The Age of Empire to Liao Garden. Despite the name change, Liao Garden will continue upon the unfinished journey set out by its predecessor with new connotations of energetics, where Zheng Guogu would like to describe the artistic concern in the following way:

In the course of its evolution from The Age of Empire to Liao Garden, this place has indeed undergone many changes. The shift that took place from the continuous expansion in The Age of Empire to the focus on perception and cognition in Liao Garden, indicates that the place is mutating toward a different form of aesthetics that is distinguished from semiotics. It’s an aesthetic of the energetics of the ground, such that it would foster an artist’s consciousness and will to take deep roots in the ground, connecting with all kinds of joining points of energy that are buried underneath the surface, responding to them, and letting reality’s contradictions counter each other in one place, a process from which inspiration will naturally spark. 

For Zheng Guogu, the transformation between daily space and art space goes on uninterrupted. The artworks become the crystals endlessly refracting from this brimful flow of perceptions while testing the energies in his surroundings and making us think: how to return to creation and existence itself?