Her / Me

She is both 「her」 (the girlfriend as absolute Other) and 「me」 (the projected artist self). The portrait becomes the materialization of the Persona, while the wholly nude body is the laying-bare of the Shadow.

The third year, 「fighting poison with poison」 — maintaining awareness at the height of desire, testing Lévinas's ethics of the face within intimate relations: can the face (visage) of the Other still pierce through pleasure and issue the ethical command 「thou shalt not kill」? Here 「he」 and 「she」 are superimposed, at once the nakedness (nudité) of the absolute Other and the object of desire, at once the openness of 「Saying」 (le Dire) and the possessed 「Said」 (le Dit).

In 2014, his mother was diagnosed with cancer; doctors pronounced twenty days. The artist flew back from Beijing, splitting into 「Lao Mu」 and 「Meng Chunsheng」 — one caring for his parents for three years, the other creating in Jingdezhen before abandoning it. Referencing the Tibetan Buddhist 「three years, three months」 retreat, he designed his own secular practice: Year One, abstinence; Year Two, sitting unmoved; Year Three, fighting poison with poison. Carried to hospital by ambulance, wheelchair-bound for half a year. The little vegetable-market bicycle is the entire instrument of dharma and the third retention.