The Full Essay
Project Essay
2014—2026 · A body–text–ink practice in continuous development.
“Conceptual Landscape” is a long-term conceptual art project that takes the body as medium, nature as site, and time as dimension. The project refuses the brushwork formulas and stylistic rigidity of traditional landscape painting; it advocates “merging into one with water” through real interaction with mountains and waters, letting nature itself become the dominant force in creation.
The project began with water-side actions at Jingdezhen's Sanbao Reservoir in 2014. The artist intervened in the water system through swimming, drifting, writing, and scavenging — transforming the ancient wisdom of the Naxi creation epic 《Chongbantu》 ('water is the base-point of all things') into contemporary embodied practice. The reflection in water (Naxi “ohng”, meaning soul/shadow) became the core image of this stage — body entering water, soul emerging, action as work.
In June 2014 the artist began a “three-year retreat” (later extended to five years), transforming external mountain-forest wandering into inner stream-of-consciousness drift, and gestated the artistic alter-ego “Meng Chunsheng”. Over the following decade-plus, the images and texts of those water-side actions continued to ferment, transforming into ceramics, ink, installation and other forms.
From December 2025 to January 2026 the artist completed the 《Zongtong Temple》 conceptual art painting project at Zongtong Temple in Thailand: using a 50 cm × 50 m raw xuan paper handscroll as carrier, with ink, mineral pigments and charcoal as materials, re-enacting at the desk the “loss of control” and “submission” he once performed in water. The water-absorbency of raw xuan and the flowing nature of water are of one substance; the fifty-meter scroll is like a river on paper, marking “Conceptual Landscape”'s conceptual closure from action to text, from body to brushwork.
Core concept: “Without style becomes style” — no preset, no control, let mountains and waters speak for themselves.
Materials: body, water, raw xuan paper, ink, mineral pigments, charcoal, daily leftover objects.
Location: Jingdezhen / continuously moving.
Time: 24 April 2014 — present.