YANG  Cheng  wen

This  exhibition  is  called  “A  Current  of  Sand”.  Sand  always  gives  me  a  feeling  of  time  going  by.

I  was  obsessed  by  the  desert  since  the  first  time  I  saw  it.  It  seemed  so  cool  and  spectacular  with  the  blue  sky  and  the  scorching  sun  of  the  noon.  I  couldn’t  help  being  bare  feet  on  the  sand.  Feeling  its  flow,  my  feet  instantly  found  a  sense  of  belonging.  Going  upward  along  the  sand  ridges,  I  could  find  various  landscapes  in  different  positions.  At  first  there  was  all  sand  in  my  eyesight  and  the  sky  above  me,  later  I  found  continuous  sand  mountains  far  away,  soon  there  appeared  a  lake  over  there  lying  on  the  sand  like  a  mirror.  Looking  downwards  from  the  sand  ridge,  I  came  in  a  cliffy  way.  The  sand  was  getting  hotter,  but  I  was  unwilling  to  go  backwards  while  I  worried  I  might  fall  off  the  sand  hillsides.  But  soon  another  idea  came  into  my  mind:  nothing  was  going  to  happen  if  I  fell  off,  instead  maybe  it  was  a  great  fun;  then  without  hesitation  I  stepped  into  it.  Sometimes  danger  comes  from  fear.  Without  the  barrier  of  heart,  everything  will  become  natural.  I  began  to  walk  on  the  cliffy  sand  hillsides,  with  my  feet  more  sink  into  the  sand.  The  touched  sand  instantly  flew  like  sea  and  left  some  new  marks.  There  were  strange  travelers  waving  hands  to  me  not  far  away,  so  I  smiled  and  waved  my  hands  to  him,  too.  The  wind  took  birds’  songs  farther  and  sands  from  here  to  there.

Time  is  like  a  kind  of  special  sandpaper,  which  lets  us  peel  ourselves  gradually  and  gives  us  another  kind  of  luster.

I  often  remind  of  another  experience.  One  night  we  lost  ourselves  in  the  wild,  unable  to  find  any  residents  around.  We  called  for  help,  telling  our  approximate  position,  switched  off  the  cell  phone  and  waited  for  the  driver  to  come  and  save  us.  During  the  night  the  feeling  of  getting  lost  seemed  purer,  and  darkness  seemed  transparent  and  far-reaching.  Our  eyes  gradually  adopted  darkness  and  the  mountains  and  woods  became  faintly  visible.  We  gradually  heard  the  wild  sounds.  All  were  quite  great  fun.  On  the  next  day,  I’d  like  to  check  the  exact  place  where  we  had  been  trapped,  so  the  end  of  the  previous  day  became  the  start  of  the  following  day.  But  in  the  sunlight  no  mystery  ever  remained  in  the  same  place;  I  couldn’t  help  laughing  at  my  loss  here.  This  experience  reminds  me  of  losses  in  painting.  Sometimes  puzzles  can  make  me  happy;  now  I  can  enjoy  the  moments  heartily.    

Start  and  end,  hardly  to  define,  often  exchange  their  roles.  However,  the  “mean”  state  in  the  middle  of  them  is  so  beautiful.