羅 一

 

When speaking of “word,” it’s hard for East Asian artists not to think of calligraphy. The fervor for shaping and beautifying pictographic characters—a passion cultivated over thousands of years—feels as if it's encoded in our blood, even in the context of contemporary art. I am no exception.

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I have been entangled with word all my life. Leaving aside its cultural, philosophical, and poetic dimensions, my visual and experiential associations are many: my father was a gifted folk calligrapher whose characters adorned the gates of households and factories in our region—his writing gave me the pride and identity of my childhood. During a period of family misfortune, my teenage years were heavy with contemplation, and copying obscure classical texts became a secret weapon to suppress anxiety and enter a deeper mode of learning. In over two decades of professional artistic practice, the daily ritual of copying Buddhist sutras using traditional brush and ink has been a method of grounding and meditation—even through the unbearable cold of northern winters and the suffocating heat of summer. During the pandemic, when I was trapped in a foreign apartment longing for home, calligraphy once again became my remedy.

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But calligraphy is not the same as word. Beyond its link to writing and bodily practice, calligraphy also carries implicit class hierarchies and cultural inertia. In contrast, word—by virtue of its intrinsic connection to meaning—possesses energy simply through its presence.

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In contemporary visual art, word has long since broken free from the confines of calligraphy. I first realized this in my Window Series and later Palimpsest Series, where word became not only readable, but also visible—and even tangible. Its visibility goes beyond ornamentation: even when the meaning is obscured—when the viewer cannot read the language, or when the word is smudged or overwritten—it still transmits energy through form. The presence of word always evokes a mysterious spiritual tension. Beyond physical linkage, the relationship between word and meaning seems to possess a wave-like connection that cannot easily be severed.

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In the early phase of my work (including sculpture), I was unconsciously influenced by the cultural legacy of calligraphy—through the visual and performative experience of writing. After the Window Series, I shifted toward expressing the essence of word itself—its embedded meaning. In the Palimpsest Series, I went further to explore the heterogeneity of layered scripts and the poetic friction of overlapping writing.

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For thousands of years, word has served as the underlying code of civilization. The invention of printing diminished calligraphy, and computers further severed word from its reliance on paper. Yet paradoxically, this detachment has brought greater awareness to the weight of word within the architecture of human civilization.

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Today, artificial intelligence is rapidly changing the traditional reliance of knowledge, skill, and even logical reasoning on the human brain. The written word—once born from the collaboration of hand, eye, and mind—is gradually losing the sacred aura that once demanded reverence. As civilization “spills” from the human brain into external systems at lightning speed, new expressive structures have emerged within machines—often surpassing our own. Will this godlike construct bring new forms of love and surprise, or will it confront us with a future we are wholly unprepared to face?

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Such thoughts form the underlying context of my two series: Before the Word and After the Word. And the work continues to unfold.