Zheng Guogu

Grand Visionary Transformation of Hevajra 2016

Grand Visionary Transformation of Hevajra depicts one of the enlightened beings of Tantric Buddhism in the unique style of digital-age thangka painting that Zheng Guogu has developed over the past half-decade. The painting is dominated by a six-armed Citta (mind) Hevajra, one of four forms of the enlightened being described in the tantras (the others being body, speech and heart). The deity stands in a dancing pose on a sun disc and lotus flower, embracing a consort, surrounded by a grand retinue of dakinis, enlightened figures of Tibetan Buddhism.

The ‘Visionary Transformation’ series is an attempt to extract the essence of what the artist describes as the ‘classic multimedia power’ of thangka — and its capacity to act on a spiritual and even physical level — as a model for organising colours and images corresponding to his studies of qi, the fundamental life force or energy flow of Chinese medicine and martial arts.

Zheng creates the distinct overlapping imagery of these paintings by combining several visual elements on a computer and then printing the composite image onto a canvas, where he overpaints with oils by hand. His striking colour scheme of hot pinks, electric greens and deep blacks recalls a colour photographic negative. All of these techniques were selected by the artist for the way in which their visual frequencies correspond to the rhythms of the body’s meridian system — the path through which qi flows — within traditional Chinese medicine. They are, however, products of their time — digital-age contrivances of image layering, hue and saturation organised on illuminated computer screens.