《西面幻化》系列展开自艺术家运用自己的经胳和身体感知西方绘画的过程,通过将这种探测和遭遇的经验转换成当代绘画,艺术家探讨艺术所带来的跨越东西方界限的能量流动,从而超越图像表象的差异。
对郑国谷来说,历史上的艺术作品不是作为表达的终点,而应该成为感知的起点,艺术家不是基于艺术史的知识和分析,而是通过引入类似“望闻问切”的感官探测方式来直接测试作品所携带的能量。在他看来,西方绘画历史中的的神学主题,和唐卡绘画所关注的主题遥相呼应,都呈现出虚实之间无限转换(幻化)的特性。
在《西面幻化》中,艺术家将不同绘画的正像与正像、正像和负像进行重叠,从而在正反之间,形象不断产生变幻,如镜像般无限延伸,揭示其显像背后隐蔽的空间。
The Visionary Transformation of the West comes from the process of the artist using his own jingluo (main and collateral channels, regarded as a network of passages, through which energy circulates and along which the acupuncture points are distributed) and body to perceive western paintings. Through the transformation of this kind of investigation and encountered experiences into contemporary paintings, the artist explores the energy flows brought about through art that cross the boundaries between the east and the west, thereby transcends the differences in the representations of images.
For Zheng Guogu, artworks from history are not the end of expression but should be the starting points of perception; artists are not reliant upon the knowledge and analysis of art history, but should introduce a kind of perceptive method such as “gazing, listening (smelling), questioning, touching” (in Chinese medicine practices) into direct examination of the energy carried by the works. In his point of view, the subject of divinity in the history of western paintings are resonant with the subject in Thangka paintings, both having a characteristic of infinite transformations between the virtual and the real, abstract and figurative.
In Visionary Transformation of the West, the artist overlaps images, and superimposes positive images with negative images, so that the imagery is constantly changing among the multi-layers of the positive and the negative, like a mirror image extending infinitely, revealing the space behind its apparent visualisation.