Stop

Stop from Shao Fan

There is a similarity in the Chinese character “Stop” and “pavilion”. A pavilion comes from the Chinese classical garden. It is the highlight of a garden. It provides a place for people to stop and to appreciate or retrospect the views, feeling the conjunction and coexistence of the nature and selfness.

Almost everyone stick to the “view of a sustainable development” nowadays. But in ancient China an opposite vision is held. For thousands of years the Chinese believed a “state of stillness”. Until the loss of Opium War in 1840 they adopted all “sustainable” views that formed by the Westerner: the world view, value and aesthetics. But such a high-developed civilization has brought human unsolvable crisis for the last two centuries. Now we rediscover the value of the ancient “still-stated civilization”. I think that this still civilization has frozen the development of science and technology, but it fertilizes the art profoundly, making it the utmost goal for people at that time. For me art or aesthetics is bigger than science, politics and even culture. Maybe it prevails anything…  Therefore I send a message of “stop” in my work. A stand-downed pavilion, a detailed draft, the famous Crane Picture from Bei Song Dynasty, and the feathers that left by the cranes—all imply a certain sensation, a lost value and aesthetics.