Grand Transformation No.3
Han Mo
2014
Ink and mineral pigment on xuan paper
145×368cm
Begun in 2013, Grand Transformation is the central series of Han Mo's practice over the past decade. Dahua — the Great Transformation — comes from the Zhuangzi: the ceaseless turning by which all things come to be and pass away. The series turns its gaze to the extreme: not a mountain or a river, but the generation and transformation of the cosmos itself. Each work is built from ink and mineral pigment on xuan paper, layer upon layer of sedimentation and crystallisation — azurite, cinnabar and ochre settling slowly in water, permeating one another until the image is not depicted but grown, the way natural things grow. Even a modestly sized work can take more than ten days; in that slowness, time itself becomes a material of the painting. Han Mo has said that the reds of this series bring him a meditative stillness and joy.
No. 5 is the largest work of the series' mature period, painted on a full zhang'er sheet (approx. 145 × 368 cm). At this scale, sedimentation and crystallisation are no longer surface texture — they become the structure and fate of the whole image, and the viewer standing before it is drawn bodily into a slow, immense transformation. It is Han Mo's fullest statement of the Great Transformation: not a view of the universe, but a painting that is itself an act of generation.
Grand Transformation No.3
Han Mo
2014
Ink and mineral pigment on xuan paper
145×368cm
Begun in 2013, Grand Transformation is the central series of Han Mo's practice over the past decade. Dahua — the Great Transformation — comes from the Zhuangzi: the ceaseless turning by which all things come to be and pass away. The series turns its gaze to the extreme: not a mountain or a river, but the generation and transformation of the cosmos itself. Each work is built from ink and mineral pigment on xuan paper, layer upon layer of sedimentation and crystallisation — azurite, cinnabar and ochre settling slowly in water, permeating one another until the image is not depicted but grown, the way natural things grow. Even a modestly sized work can take more than ten days; in that slowness, time itself becomes a material of the painting. Han Mo has said that the reds of this series bring him a meditative stillness and joy.
No. 5 is the largest work of the series' mature period, painted on a full zhang'er sheet (approx. 145 × 368 cm). At this scale, sedimentation and crystallisation are no longer surface texture — they become the structure and fate of the whole image, and the viewer standing before it is drawn bodily into a slow, immense transformation. It is Han Mo's fullest statement of the Great Transformation: not a view of the universe, but a painting that is itself an act of generation.