60” x 30”, oil on canvas

I mistook this existence for poetry.

Now I find myself empty-handed.

The centuries are locked in gardens.

But existence speaks its feelings,

Brightening the rooves of the pleasure quarters.

This text was pieced together from three different poems in the Introduction to the Introduction to Wang Wei. The painting was made with Zhang Dai in mind.

He was a writer in the late Ming period, born into wealth. When the Manchu conquered China, the world he knew disappeared. Much of his writing is an attempt to recover that lost idealized world. His most famous book is Searching for West Lake in My Dreams.

 “One cannot befriend a man who is without any fault for he is without authenticity.” (Zhang Dai)

 The painting was exhibited at 26, the gallery, in Michael Davidson’s The Soul In September.