About 2,500 years ago, philosophers lived in isolation in the wilderness of technology and perceived the truth of essence and quality among mountains and waters. Humans rose with the sun, followed water and grass for settlement, and turned the wheel of history by relying on the primitive power of nomadism and agriculture. Thus, ideological leaders such as Socrates, Sakyamuni, Jewish prophets, and pre-Qin scholars emerged in Eastern and Western civilizations, creating the "Axial Age" recorded in Jaspers' book. Among them, the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus, whose era was a century earlier than that of Socrates, regarded everything in the world as constantly changing. In short, that is, straight and curved, strong and weak, bright and dark, sad and happy, and the like, are all instantaneous existences. Sharing a sympathetic understanding with Lao Tzu in the distant Eastern country earlier and his "Three gives birth to all things", Heraclitus summarized the state of things as "Everything flows, and nothing remains", and the more widely spread saying, "One cannot step twice into the same river". From this perspective, plainness seems to have the same destiny as profundity. The transformation between extremes involves the spontaneity and awakening of individual consciousness, and humans have never lacked rumination on the mundane. Representing objects by their shapes, endowing colors according to types, or chewing out new sequences from ancient narratives. The contest between spirit and body allows thoughts to shift from the "visible" to the "invisible". The maneuvering between intuition and speculation eventually enables vastness to swallow narrowness. The creation of art is also the result of maneuvering. Pen, intention, shape, color, touch, and method. When artists constantly translate everything that changes in their hands to read the mundane, the so-called elusiveness gives birth to a gap of the "image", with ambiguous cloud mountains, deep-cut lines, stories being purified and simplified, and emotions showing mottled marks. Therefore, although "nothing remains", the picture of heaven and earth, without visible flowing water, echoes in the empty valley.
"Return to Nature" originated from this. Here, it does not deliberately allude to the specific landscapes of the mundane world, or forcibly echo the philosophers' reclusive solitude. It is more like a temporary experience plan to awaken the authenticity of our inner nature. Explore the wonderful reaction between the "visible" and the "invisible", and inspire the confrontation between the ordinary and the ideal. During the process, we do not encourage the baseless conception of nonexistent things, but are willing to observe the individual's reorganization of the inner life experience, a transformation of images, the sublimation of emotions and the flowing poetry.
"Return to Nature" presents outstanding works by artists Wang Xunsheng, Kashif Alam Saleem, Tian Li, A Xiu, Li Qiang, and Liu Wentao. They come from different nationalities, different ages, and different growth environments, but all regard abstract language as a tool to help them discover inward. Through the confession of what they like in their hearts, they guide the return to the tranquility and intensity extracted from the Eastern context. Crossing the plain lines and color blocks here, there are numerous mountains and waters, with unexpected turns and pleasant surprises.
