羅 一

 

​The I Ching series is my earliest experimental body of work through which I consciously entered the field of abstract art. It began with a core inquiry: Can an artwork created without a predetermined plan still carry genuine, perceptible meaning? When an artist relinquishes control over the creative process, is there truly an invisible force at work? And if so, can that mystery be felt or recognized by human perception?

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This question first emerged during an interview I conducted with an abstract artist who claimed that her creative process was guided by mystical religious experiences. She believed her images were directed by an unseen power. A deeper influence, however, came from the long-standing mystical tendencies within art history—particularly the modernist notion of the "seed painting," which fascinated me.

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To test the possibility of such mysticism, I turned to acrylic's fluid and spontaneous nature, using its dripping and splashing properties to step back from actively controlling the image. The painting was allowed to emerge on its own. During that period, I would often get up in the middle of the night to witness how a work had quietly evolved in my absence.

The results surprised me. These paintings revealed an uncanny coherence—a mysterious harmony unique to my hand. Yet I remained uneasy with the uncertainty they carried. Only when I began naming the pieces after the 64 hexagrams of the I Ching did the agitation begin to settle. It felt almost miraculous: the resonance between image and hexagram gave the work new weight, as if it had absorbed the energy of the ancient text.

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As we know, the 64 hexagrams are formed by combining pairs of eight elemental symbols: Heaven, Earth, Water, Fire, Thunder, Wind, Mountain, and Lake. In this series, the collision and flow of acrylic pigment—guided by both the subconscious and an inexplicable presence—seemed to generate a visual cosmology, like a living map of the universe. It became a quiet divinatory surface, rich with hidden energies. The correlation between symbol and form defied logic yet proved astonishingly precise. For example:

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I-Ching – Shi (The Army) conveys the force of collapsing mountains and surging water, echoing its meaning of mobilization and power;

I-Ching – Yu (Enthusiasm) reflects the trembling ground and the birth of spring, aligning with its essence of joyous initiation;

I-Ching – Jian (Obstruction) embodies frozen tension and immovable resistance, resonating with its theme of hardship and delay.

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Non-predetermined creation marks a vital turning point in art history. It opens a door long sealed by the weight of formal conventions. My personal experience revealed that beyond that threshold lay even more doors and windows. Non-predetermination does not mean surrendering entirely to a "divine" agent; rather, it calls forth the artist's deepest subconscious—visual memory, bodily instinct, fragments of learned knowledge—to participate in the act of making.

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With the I Ching series, I began to explore the interplay between "selflessness" and "self," between the divine and the human. Heidegger's ideas of "being-toward-death" and the forest path of "concealment and unconcealment" brought unexpected vitality to the artistic process. Yet in essence, I resonate more with Kierkegaard's theistic existentialism: my art cannot exist without the divine, nor can it exist without me.

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The I Ching series marks the beginning of a working method that fuses theory with practice. It laid the groundwork for later series including Suspending, Stillness, Abstract Theater, Palimpsest, and Word. Each of these continues to evolve from a process that is self-sufficient, self-questioning, and ultimately self-resolving.