Is There Calligraphy Outside Calligraphy?

(The Yangjiang Group)

The three artists in the Yangjiang Group, Zhen Guogu, Sun Qinglin and Chen Zaiyan all come from Yangjiang in Guangdong, and their works are full of geographical affinity. Yangjiang is their shared area, their humanistic and socio-cultural resource. Calligraphy is the creative format that they share for dealing with problems and their shared area of interest. ‘Site’ is the combined presentational morphology of their works. Yangjiang, calligraphy and ‘site’ together are the three great basic characteristics that structure the Yangjiang Group’s creative work.

The Yangjiang Group’s involvement with calligraphy began with an escape. If they wanted to get at new possibilities they first had to get out of the traditional system of calligraphy, and they returned to writing and people who write to find their roots, to look for and discover the problems before they returned to the formation of calligraphy. They took with them the tools of writing, pen, ink and paper and returned to the primeval conditions of writing, handing over the writing tools and the right to write to the grassroots masses. In the rough and vigorous smearing, the morphology of calligraphy was altered, and also, ecologically, was returned to nature, returned to the society of the masses. The practicality of calligraphy was restituted, and its relationship with reality was also reestablished, and life at the bottom social level was reflected through these ink graffiti with exceptional vigor and accuracy.

(Tang Xin, The Yangjiang Group – Bringing calligraphy and Yangjiang to the Site, 2007[Excerpt])