Hsu, Fan-Hsuan
In 2010, I moved to my current residence (Nagakute, Aichi Prefecture, Japan), and it took a long time before I discovered a small and lush forest nearby – a twenty minute walk away through a small and quiet lane, past an area of old social housing and the Meito Highway. They called it the Itaka Ryokuchi Greens Park.
Itaka Ryokuchi Greens Park has kept its original landform that was conserved after the urban planning, and it is also an oasis amidst the city’s hustle and bustle. A cluster of water lilies float in a large pond in a corner of the vast green space. Near the pond are pine trees scattered here and there as well as a dense bamboo forest. Beyond the bamboo forest, a forest of various trees comes into view. I always stroll in the woods on weekday mornings, carrying an F30 blank canvas and my camera. Like a collector, I capture the rapid changes passing by in my frame, as well as the sounds of the wind, the forest, and the animals.
Nature is speechless, yet there are sounds. Light and shadow, wind and whisper, interweave births and deaths, ups and downs. A snap of one’s finger is as fleeting as one moment, within which hundreds of births and deaths take place. And thus, a moment is not just an instant, and eternity is no longer eternal. The flashing images in the forest are like a mirage, both real and unreal. The constant changes are to demonstrate the constant truth of change, embodied in the impermanence, and revealing the Dao (or Way, how the heaven and the world work) in a silent way.
The spiritual world is more subtle and deeper than nature. So when I create, I have slowly learned to give up the many narratives, no longer chasing after the perfect beauty of an image, but rather gradually establishing an imagined relationship between the self and nature. Perception on the visual level gradually transitions into a psychological level of perception, a transfer process considered “purifying” in effect. Through purification and moderation, I tried to embody the meaning of imagism in the realm of realism, trying to carry the imagination of thinking with the trace of writing, and to send the greatest freedom in the minimum of color, description and form, making the moment turn into eternity.
I planted a cherry tree in the backyard of my studio. The sapling that was less than three feet tall now has grown to the second-floor window. Every year, cherry blossoms bloom and fall, and when they are in full bloom, they are splendid and exquisite. However, the flowering period is short. Following a gust of wind and a rain, the petals are scattered like a snow flurry, and in the blink of an eye laid flat. This is the impermanence in the ordinary, fleeting but incomparably sensitive and delicate, like a glimpse of light, a disillusioned sense of beauty, and a representation of incomplete beauty. To see a heaven in a wild flower. To see Bodhi in a leaf. Being versus nonbeing. Full versus null. Being present as if it were not. Seemingly absent yet it is there. This is Dao, omnipresent and represented in the ordinary — in the branches and the leaves.