Mirror’s Edge, Sculpting Light: The Formation and Reconstitution of Chen Zhiguang’s Cross-Media Visual Order

Text/Liang Kegang

Abstract

Chen Zhiguang, who has long established industry coordinates with his mirror-finished stainless steel sculptures and the "Ant" symbolism system, has recently turned to the medium of oil painting over the past three years, completing an inward linguistic migration with the "Piling Light" series. This batch of black, white, and gray-toned flat oil paintings does not signify a rupture or departure from his sculptural creations but rather a two-dimensional translation of his decades-long material experience, spatial thinking, and mirror visual perception. The artist employs "capture" as a core technique to seize the chaotic light and dark textures generated by the stainless steel material under multiple perspectives and light refractions, freezing the fleeting reflections of the three-dimensional mirror space onto the canvas, thus forming a contemporary visual narrative that differs from the pure abstraction of modernism.  

This article attempts to analyze the academic value of Chen Zhiguang's "Piling Light" easel painting series from four dimensions: the creator's artistic origins, the transition from sculptural thinking to painting as a medium, the boundaries of contemporary concepts in his works, and the artist's complete creative trajectory alongside academic evaluations.

I. The Fortunate Creation: The Creator's Unique Privilege to Gaze at the World's Origin

Creation is a rare spiritual act for humanity that brings us closer to the dimension of creation, and it is a unique gift of life bestowed upon artists. If we regard the formation of the natural world—mountains and rivers—as an eternal imagery of nature, then the artist is a micro creator who wields a medium to reconstruct visual order. Everything in the world has its predetermined form, logic of light and shadow, and boundaries of existence, yet only the creator possesses the freedom to dismantle, extract, reorganize, and recreate the visual landscape of reality. This intervention in the world's appearance and the reshaping of the perception system constitute the foundational self-motivation and spiritual pleasure underlying all artistic practices.

People are accustomed to passively receiving images projected by the world in the role of spectators, while artists are always active interceptors and builders. They do not have to comply with the inherent perspectives seen by the naked eye; they can soar high above, overlooking the undulations of the earth, or bend down to closely engage with textures and capture the fleeting changes of light. They do not need to replicate the complete appearance of objective objects; they can isolate colors, dissolve outlines, leaving only the pure visual fragments composed of light and dark, concavities and convexities, and refractions. The joy of creation does not lie in depicting reality but in establishing a perception grammar that belongs solely to oneself. With their medium as a chisel, they carve out channels in the chaotic visual wilderness, using blocks of color and light as soil to build a unique undulating territory of the spiritual world. This essence is also embodied in the exhibition's name, "Terrian & Radiance".

Chen Zhiguang's creative career has always been rooted in this instinct for creation. Early in his career, he studied painting, then delved into sculpture, public installations, and cross-media experiments, spending decades traversing between three-dimensional entities and two-dimensional planes. His practice in sculpture has equipped him with the ability to shape mass and control space, while the use of mirrored stainless steel has taught him to understand the secret dialogue between light and reflection. Although he is renowned for his sculptures, he has never abandoned the brush, continuously engaging in easel painting parallel to his sculptural work. In this series, the canvas becomes a miniature universe, with black, white, and gray paints replacing stainless steel materials. The sunken deep black represents the ravines carved by the earth, while the raised light white signifies the highlands formed by the accumulation of light. Each oil painting is a miniature creation he completes from a god-like perspective on a flat medium.

Natural creations do not differentiate between plane and volume, and the artist's privilege lies in the free choice of medium to reshape the order of light and space.

II. The Sculptor's Entry into the Picture: The Flat Translation of Stainless Steel Sculpture Experience

In the contemporary art scene, Chen Zhiguang's identity is closely tied to his mirror-finished stainless steel sculptures. His "Ant" series, traditional theater installations, and large public sculptures all utilize highly polished stainless steel as their core language. The cold, hard metal reflects light in a way that creates a unique visual field, interweaving reality and illusion, as well as the play of light and shadow. While the public and academia are familiar with his three-dimensional works, they have seldom glimpsed the visual accumulation hidden behind his sculptural creations. Over three decades of sculptural practice, he has never abandoned his easel painting. In the past three years, his easel painting work "Piled Light" is precisely the concentrated release of decades of sculptural methods and material experiences, with sculptural thinking deeply embedded in every layer of texture in his paintings.

Firstly, the volumetric thinking of sculpture dominates the construction of the image space. Traditional oil painting often uses perspective and the play of light and shadow to create a virtual depth, whereas Chen Zhiguang completely applies the logic of sculpting shapes to the canvas. In his view, the image does not consist of simple color blocks; there are only two types of terrain: "concave" and "convex." Large areas of black and dark gray correspond to the negative space that curves inward in sculpture, resembling ravines and hollows carved into the earth. Bright white and light gray blocks represent the solid volumes that protrude outward, akin to hills and mounds formed by the stacking of earth and stone. He rejects conventional flat compositions and adopts a God-like, bird's-eye perspective throughout, treating the entire canvas as a complete territory (as indicated in the exhibition title "Territory"). By simulating the undulations of the earth's surface with contrasting light and dark color blocks, he gives the two-dimensional canvas a sculptural, tactile relief quality, achieving a media transformation that "shapes the land through painting."

Secondly, the perception of light through mirror-finished stainless steel becomes the core of painting. The long process of polishing and forging mirror-finished stainless steel has given Chen Zhiguang a unique sensitivity to light refraction, multiple reflections, and gradual shifts in light and shadow, setting him apart from ordinary painters. The highly polished metallic surface does not possess fixed colors; all visual forms are generated by environmental light, the observer's perspective, and spatial reflections. Under strong light, bright white highlights emerge, while deep shadows can fade into dark gray or pure black. The interplay of refraction at different angles weaves into a freely flowing chaotic form without fixed contours. All the black, white, and gray abstract images in the "Stacked Light" series originate from the artist's observations of light and shadow on the surfaces of his stainless steel sculptures.

Thirdly, the "interception" technique connects the creative logic of sculpture and painting. In his sculptural work, Chen Zhiguang often enlarges and reconstructs symbols by selecting microscopic details, amplifying tiny ants into giant installations. Transitioning to painting, he continues this working method, abandoning complete narrative representation of objects. Instead, he deliberately captures the fleeting fragments of light and shadow reflected in stainless steel, stripping away the physical form of the sculpture and retaining only the abstract texture of the interplay of light and dark replicated on the canvas. These seemingly non-representational images are not mere formal games; they are visual slices extracted from three-dimensional mirrored space, embodying the light and shadow essence of the sculptural material, existing independently after departing from physicality.

Stainless steel grants sculptures a mirrored illusion where the virtual and the real coexist, while oil paintings capture the transitory moments of reflection. Sculpture embodies light through physical presence, while painting solidifies light in blocks of color. One expands, the other piles up; one recesses, the other bulges, culminating in a two-way flow of creative experience between three-dimensional and two-dimensional forms.

Stainless steel has taught him to read flowing light, while the canvas provides a container to freeze that light. Sculpture is a three-dimensional field of light, while painting is a two-dimensional slice of light.

III: Beyond Form: The Conceptual Divides between "Piling Light" and Modernist Abstraction

Visually, "Piling Light" with its flowing black, white, and gray textures can easily be classified within the realm of modernist abstract painting. However, a deeper investigation into the underlying conceptual logic reveals essential divides between Chen Zhiguang's body of easel paintings and the modernist abstract creations of figures like Mondrian, Rothko, and de Kooning. Its contemporaneity emerges from this differentiated visual narrative.

The core appeal of modernist abstract painting is to detach from realistic subjects and arrive at a state of pure formal coherence. Whether through the cool abstract geometry or the emotional expressiveness of hot abstraction, these forms sever the connection between imagery and external reality, viewing colors, lines, and textures as independent spiritual carriers that seek absolute self-discipline in the formal aspects of the artwork. The logic of creation turns inward, isolating itself from tangible references to the external material world. Modern abstraction represents "pure visuals after the abandonment of reality," its origins lie in the artist’s inner emotions and subjective aesthetic forms, not relying on visual feedback from any external material mediums.

In contrast, Chen Zhiguang's abstract textures are based on a simulacrum of reality, rooted in tangible materials and possess a clearly traceable source— the reflection of light and shadow on mirrored stainless steel. All the light and dark elements and flowing forms in the artwork are not the result of subjective fabrication, but rather a translation of the optical phenomena associated with industrial materials, firmly anchoring the abstract shell to substantial mediums and real space. The primary divide between the two lies in the source of imagery; modern abstraction has no reality prototypes, while the abstract forms in "Piling Light" are objectively derived from the interplay of light and shadow on industrial materials.

The second layer of differentiation is the disparity in spatial concepts. Modern abstraction dissolves three-dimensional space, pursuing the ultimate expression of the canvas's flatness. However, Chen Zhiguang deliberately reconstructs a virtual three-dimensional realm with a sculptural thought process. The image inherently possesses a geographical spatial attribute that overlooks the earth, where black and gray represent ravines, and white and gray denote highlands, constructing a complete and perceivable surface field. Abstraction merely serves as a presenting medium; the core is an exploration of the relationship between space, topography, and the materiality of light and shadow, rather than a pure formal experiment.

The third layer of differentiation is the intervention of contemporary ideas. Modernist abstraction emerged in the early days of industrialization, with its core revolving around the liberation of the human subjective spirit. In contrast, Chen Zhiguang's abstract creations are rooted in the post-industrial era, where mirror stainless steel serves as a typical material of industrialization and urbanization. The multiple reflections implicitly convey a contemporary societal mirror metaphor: the multifaceted reflections of self and other, the real and the illusory, the individual and the collective. The seemingly tranquil and silent texture of black, white, and gray conceals a reflection on the contemporary visual state of existence — the world we see is essentially a fleeting semblance woven together by light, mirror, and perspective.

In other words, modernist abstraction is a "form that escapes reality," while "Piling Light" represents an "abstraction rooted in material." The former reaches spirituality through pure form, while the latter refracts the perception of the era through material light and shadow. This precisely forms the core support for this batch of easel paintings that transcends formal aesthetics and possesses a complete contemporary artistic concept.

Modern abstraction severed reality to fulfill form, while Chen Zhiguang's mimetic painting anchors material to reflect the times.

IV. Cross-Domain Journeys: The Artistic Context and Core Academic Commentary on Chen Zhiguang

Chen Zhiguang, born in 1963 in Xiamen, graduated in 1988 from the Fine Arts Department of Fujian Normal University. He initially studied painting systematically before furthering his education in sculpture at the Düsseldorf Academy of Fine Arts in Germany. For over thirty years, he has delved into contemporary sculpture, installation, and public art. He holds various academic positions, including executive director of the Chinese Sculpture Society, researcher at the Urban Design Institute of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, and director of the Contemporary Art Research Institute at Fujian Normal University. He is one of the few contemporary artists in China who seamlessly integrates sculpture, painting, public space, and cross-medium experimentation.

His artistic path shows a clear trajectory of cross-medium progression. After 2000, he established an industry symbol with his "Ant" series in mirror stainless steel, hosting large solo exhibitions in venues such as the Today Art Museum in Beijing, the National Grand Theater, the Baolong Art Museum in Shanghai, and the Taipei Contemporary Art Museum. His works have been exhibited in international institutions, including the Ludwig Museum in Koblenz, Germany, and the Meridian Art Center in Washington, USA. He has participated in major domestic academic exhibitions such as the Shanghai Biennale and the Wuzhen International Contemporary Art Invitation Exhibition. His stainless steel sculpture system has become an important example in the exploration of post-industrial materials in Chinese contemporary sculpture. He has consistently rejected medium barriers and has never ceased his canvas creations. In the past three years, he has focused on new explorations in easel painting, completing a full linguistic loop from three-dimensional sculpture to two-dimensional painting. The "Piling Light" series represents a key achievement in his phase of cross-medium exploration.

The core academic circle of the domestic art world has a continuous and unified scholarly judgment on Chen Zhiguang's work, with Mr. Fan Di'an's commentary being the most representative: “Chen Zhiguang is an artist who deeply combines perception and sensibility. His artistic vision is broad, having long traversed multiple fields of painting, sculpture, and installation. He bridges different media's visual perception, constructing a coherent conceptual logic through cross-disciplinary experimentation, never stagnating but continuously exploring cultural themes in contemporary art. He excels at transforming everyday materials and small lives into visual symbols rich in cultural metaphors, such as ants shaped from stainless steel, constructing a unique viewing system from a sociobiological perspective.”

Other critics point out that the most outstanding feature of Chen Zhiguang's work is "material synesthesia": he can accurately capture the spiritual qualities of one medium and fully transfer them to another. The unique virtuality, refraction, and volumetric perception of stainless steel mirrors flow seamlessly into this oil painting creation, giving the painting the weight of sculpture and allowing the flat surface to bear the cold light of metal. Unlike most artists who stick to a single medium, Chen Zhiguang views sculpture and painting as two outlets of the same creative logic; the medium is merely a tool for expression, while the reflections on light, space, life, and the era are the core themes that run throughout.

The spatial judgment and material sensitivity accumulated over decades of sculptural practice have not diminished when transitioning to painting; rather, they have become a unique identifier that distinguishes the “Piling Light” series from other abstract paintings. These new easel works are not supplementary branches of Chen Zhiguang's creation, but an indispensable two-dimensional branch of his complete artistic system, filling in important pieces of the flat language in his cross-media visual exploration.

V. Conclusion: Expanding Light in Territory, the Perpetual Creation of Boundless Media

The current solo exhibition "Terrian & Radiance" by Chen Zhiguang in Beijing is a personal media experiment that reflects both introspection and outward extension. While the industry tends to define him by stainless steel sculptures, he demonstrates through a series of black, white, and gray paintings that the essence of the creator is not the medium itself, but the continuous thought of creation and the eternal inquiry into light and space. "Expanding" signifies an act of digging down, representing the sculptor's long-term perception of negative space; "Territory" refers to a vast area, a complete world viewed from above; "Stacking" indicates an upward rise, the accumulation of volume and highlight; "Light" is the core soul that runs through three-dimensional sculptures and two-dimensional canvases. The flowing light and shadow captured, fixed, and translated onto the canvas from polished stainless steel signifies spatial logic that has accumulated over decades of sculptural experience, a contemporary material concept distinct from modernist abstract forms, embodying a creator who constantly traverses multiple media, engaged in an unending visual reconstruction.

Media may be categorized as flat or three-dimensional, but creation knows no boundaries; light and shadow may differ in fleeting moments or permanence, yet our perception of the world can always be reinterpreted. Through the "Terrian & Radiance" series, Chen Zhiguang accomplishes a gentle media return, continuing his eternal journey of unearthing the earth and stacking light and color on the canvas, where media serves as the vessel, while light and territory remain the artist's everlasting themes.