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Arts & Communication Wang Yiming : Edges of the inaccessible

these two dimensions in his works, in which he situates in a Amiel’s experience. He claims to paint in a sort of trance,
time long before modern painting – a time when art served outside himself, perfectly unbound, and insensitive to the
mainly as a medium for the expression of a belief or faith. physical pain that his monumental undertakings cause. It
It is therefore hardly surprising to see the artist refers in is undeniable that these flashes of wild mysticism led him
his titles to the kora – the founding pilgrimage of the Bön to return so often to Tibet. As James Hilton mentions, the
tradition, which consisted of walking around a mountain spiritual and magnetic atmosphere of Shangri-La is not
deity to purify one’s soul during the ascent. In his eyes, found in any other places, and it is impossible to stay away
the kora are “endless hada,” and these brightly colored silk from the reflection of the moon on “the blue mountain”
scarves are offered to deities as a sign of adoration. The for long.
artist’s installations are therefore colored with a 1000-year- For all that, this is, in my opinion, the main lesson
old ritual meaning; each of his journeys and his itineraries that Wang Yiming gives us through his practice is that it
in the heart of the highlands are materialized in situ by is extremely difficult to reach, and above all, to maintain
richly decorated canvases placed on the ground, which this state of elation, where the individual feels in all the
mark the stages not only of a liberation of the self, but also fibers of his body an impression of “co-ownership” of
of a rediscovered union of man with the sacred. Returned reciprocal interweaving of the self and the world. The
to their original simplicity of offerings, his paintings would exercise of the stripping requires us to renounce all our
aim, in a word and as in the early days of Buddhism, to human clothes to abstract ourselves, literally, from the
depollute the earth, to appease the gods, and to restore, world of images, and representations. However, the
finally, a balance broken by the activities of man. human seems so limited, conditioned by what Hans Arp
3. Esthetics of the numinous names the “vitreous partition” of the metaphysics that he
can get rid of the appearances only by placing himself in
Wang Yiming’s work is thus divided, punctuated by two the most extreme and the most untenable situations. That
contradictory impulses: uprooting on the one hand, and is why Wang Yiming felt the necessity of having to stand at
rooting on the other, without either of them ever being fully what could be called the “edges of the inaccessible.” They
satisfied. If the intertext of the Buddhist traditions is well are geographical limits, far from any habitable land, but
present, as shown earlier, it is never anything but a distant also physiological limits, by painting in an unbreathable
reminiscence, and the Flags with the colored spots, contrary to atmosphere, where the lack of oxygen at the slightest
the loungta, do not address any clear message, neither to man, movement is felt. These practices are not new: they were
nor to the gods. These formal references are explained, above tested, more than fifteen centuries ago, by the “Fathers
all, by the ideal they serve – that of a relationship to the world of the Desert” of the Eastern tradition. In their eyes,
[5]
where art would be in perfect adequacy with the landscape. spiritual elevation could only be acquired by means of an
Thus, well beyond the borders of Tibet, Wang Yiming’s work exile on the edge of the civilized world; of long immobile
has a universal vocation. What is important to him is to bear stations under a blazing sun, under a driving rain; and of
witness to a lived experience, through which man becomes meditations facing the changing seasons. Unfortunately,
once again sensitive to the nature that surrounds him. It it is only at this price that Wang Yiming seems to admit
is then less a question of religion or, strictly speaking, of that it is possible to find the grace of a vision, making the
tradition and origin than of the powerful and ineffable feeling desert a place of light and life, where each stone, each peak
of a link uniting all things, and that in philosophy one names shelters a divinity.
the numinous. For this reason, all the expressive forces of the Reaching us from afar, his works remind us that such
works of the artist seems to reside in what Romain Roland a modality of existence still persists and is buried in the
names “the oceanic” and Amiel calls “samâdhi”: depths of our consciousness. They teach us that in spite of
“In these moments, it seems that my consciousness the moiré fables, in which we rock ourselves, we remain
withdraws into its eternity… In these sublime and will remain to take again a beautiful formula of Francis
moments, the body has disappeared, the mind has Ponge – “a certain vibration of the nature” which “is called
simplified, unified; passions, sufferings, wills, and the man” .
[6]
ideas have resorbed in the being, like raindrops in the
ocean that generates them. This state is contemplation Acknowledgments
and not stupor… It is the sensation of spiritual infinity. None.
[4]
It is the bottom of freedom” .
Conflict of interests
In view of his testimonies, Wang Yiming seems to have
been seized by ecstasies of an intensity comparable to The author declares no conflicts of interest.

Volume 1 Issue 1 (2023) 3 https://doi.org/10.36922/ac.358