Sixteen-Sixty

By Yuebin Gong

After completion of his major contemporary installation projects such as "Site 2801," "Life's Crossroad," "Essence of Tai Chi," and "Ethereal Ink," Artist Gong Yuebin shifted his artistic focus from visual arts to literature art. He reflected on his first half of life across the globe and shared his life stories in this book.

He used two a

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gong Studio
• Release date: Sep 12, 2022
• ISBN: 9781737630012

Book preview

For most of my visual art career, whenever I have ascended to a peak, I have always been impatient and eager to get down. I’ve run from the small dirt slope in my backyard to the United States, to California, my body covered in mud, yet I have never compromised.  Fortunately, in the year that I know my own destiny, I can travel freely and without worries in California and Dali, can calmly watch and cultivate. Perhaps this is the beginning of a change from the first half of my life when I was transformed by things to me transforming things. It is good that my heart is steady now, and I feel at ease and can finally focus all my thoughts on continuing my art profession in the second half of my life. So it is.

Gong Yuebin

May 1, 2014

California

Haoyu Wang

As the pandemic evolves, my uncle Gong and I have been restricting ourselves to his house in the Bay Area while our minds roam beyond daily life: my reading and writing practices reach the imaginative cities of my interests; Gong soaks up literature and philosophy in an effort to rediscover his past sixty years. Our distinctive universes only intersect at random conversations under the sunshine of our breakfast table and in the firelight of our late-night drinks. Although I can vaguely visualize this book through our fragmented exchange of ideas, I find it hard to build the necessary frameworks for writing an appropriate preface What kind of stories does this book tell? Who could be the target audience? What ideas does this book convey? While Gong values the contrast between our minds in his invitation for me to write the prologue, I am more interested in building an alternative image of Gong’s sixteen-sixty beyond the book’s content. Instead of assembling a conventional opening for the book, I consider the following monologue a personal message toward Gong’s next sixty-year journey. I also wish for this message to provide the reader with additional dimensions for the understanding of Gong’s writings.

Gong has been performing a strong figure, even as he has been a remote role model in most of my growth. This figure was reinforced by the family legend of Gong’s entrepreneurship, his business success in Guangzhou and America, and my intuitive impressions upon visiting him in California. Although the figure’s ambition and leadership seemed far away from my own introverted personality, my parents encouraged me to learn from him through our shared interest in art. His guidance helped me through crucial steps in my personal development, including my efforts in drawing and my decision to study abroad. However, it was not until my relocation to his house that I began to discover the true Gong, who has been making his journey under the impact of the same figure. With the help of sunshine and firelight in our daily conversation, I gradually unveiled how Gong’s strong figure was shaped by his prolonged fight against society’s mighty force, his journey in business and life under the figure’s motivation, and his recent fear and anxiety over letting the figure down, given his persistent trauma after being involved in a drastic political strike. Gong has an idea of viewing the world as a mirror for his personal growth, and I am curious about the true self he sees, which has been covered by the layered makeup of struggling, advancing, injuring, and enduring cultural shocks, when he faces the mirror.

Over our half year of daily conversations, Gong and I have worked together to discover his true self. I attempt to articulate the social process that, over decades, shaped his strong figure, while Gong works on philosophical approaches to revisiting the origin of his personality. The process saw our familiar figure shifting toward antagonism, given his profound experience and success in monopolizing Gong’s identity and values, in blocking any opportunity for additional quests. Gong’s retirement from active social roles has weakened his ability to revise the figure through his mirror method. The figure appears so invincible that our attacks upon literature, philosophy, and sociology can only add to his stubbornness. To evade this figure, we eventually put our focus on Gong’s sixteenth year: an age of sensing the world’s dark side while not having to fight against it. This difficult era offered Gong his last luxurious moment of free will to venture before building the mighty figure. His adventures zoomed onto the peach trees of his backyard and the stage of performance in his sketchbook. Although these retrieved moments can hardly portray a comprehensive image of this era or of any gateway for Gong’s escape, they can help us visualize his sincere self-expression in the face of absolute darkness. As Gong put them out piece by piece, I could see a sixteen-year-old personality emerging out of the strong figure of his current sixty-year-old form.

I do not necessarily expect this book to resemble an accurate panorama of Gong’s sixteenth year, nor for it to rebuild his inner universe at the time. Instead, I see Gong’s passion for retrieving the underexposed part of his sixteenth year from the shadow of his strong figure. As Gong steps into his sixties, he has taken an oath to have listening outweigh action. It not only signifies his will to rediscover the world’s bright side beyond the traumas of his prolonged fight, but also declares war against the figure of his own creation. Instead of cherishing or replanting the sixteen peach trees of Gong’s memorable year, I believe in the idea of retrieving his curious spirit to venture into the bamboo forest of his sixties. The questing nature of this spirit makes up my honest expectation for this book. I sincerely wish for Gong’s writing to inspire and encourage his upcoming journey so that he can confidently speak out to our familiar figure: Thank you for your support over the past sixty years. Now I shall begin venturing into the world on my own!

Haoyu Wang, nephew of the author

January 1, 2021

I

In English

 

I was born in 1960 [1]in a small village on the banks of the Yellow River. My birth was full of hardships; my life was full of hardships. I was like a seedling squeezed out of the shriveled earth.

People often called me a son of a bitch due to my family circumstances. I never liked this nickname. In my mind, I always thought these conflicts, these cruelties, made even the western winds of my childhood feel colder and unbearable.

God didn’t seem to put much thought into the land that birthed me and raised me, either, and only made two brushstrokes, so light and transparent it was as if he were running out of ink. One stroke of blue and one stroke of yellow, this was all that made up my world. All along the banks of the Yellow River was nothing but sparse, watery dregs, the faint watercolors of the human world, like the ink God accidentally scattered across the barren land, little dots here and there.

Overhead the scorching sun would bake and roast the ground until the skin of Mother Earth peeled open, the flesh cracked and damaged, until all blood vessels dried and shriveled away, creating a field of uneven wrinkles and ravines in its stead. The surface of the ground resembled pieces of shortbread cut out by a knife, spread out under the sky.