Vipassanā · Zongtong Temple
4 December 2025 — 10 January 2026
- Material
- Ink, pu-erh tea water, Chinese mineral pigments, charcoal and incense ash on raw xuan paper
- Dimensions
- 100 × 35 cm
Path · 20 of 21
Picture Story
The path is not on the paper, but in the act of unrolling it.
Incision of the Real: the Way is the Symbolic's linear illusion — the moment of action (the instant of unrolling) is the Real flashing through the signifier.
Project Story
From 4 December 2025 to 10 January 2026, the artist Lao Mu undertook a forty-one-day intensive Vipassanā retreat at Wat Jong Thong (宗通寺) in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Throughout the retreat, painting served as an action-record, leaving traces of movement on a 35 cm × 50 m raw xuan paper scroll.
《宗通寺》 is the extreme meeting of conceptual performance and the ink tradition. Between observer and observed exists an angle — that is the 'who am I?' The forty-one days were not a search for an answer, but time's material sedimentation: letting the question surface on its own.
Ink · pu-erh ripened tea water · Chinese mineral pigments · charcoal · incense ash · raw xuan paper (35 × 50 m scroll and individual 35 × 35 cm and 35 × 100 cm panels).