Between the Cosmos and I, the Works on Paper of Guo Fengyi

A factory worker until a grievous form of rheumatoid arthritis forced her to retire, Guo Fengyi (1942 - 2010), late Chinese self-taught artist, dedicated her personal and professional life to finding a connection between herself and the universe, becoming the creator of visions in which the human body and its coordinates are nothing more than the transposition of a cosmic order within everything but invisible to most. In her work, there are evident references to qigong, a centuries-old Chinese discipline combining meditation, movement and breathing, as well as being a discipline that Guo used in an attempt to heal herself. The works on paper by Guo of small and large dimensions were almost all created in a state of “mystical meditation” - the artist, guided by an intuition, a temporary illumination, would generally describe it in the form of a brief text or the subject for a new drawing and then would undertake the emotional task of creating the work without having any idea of how it would come out. Mythological creatures, bodies that become landscapes and elements that evoke the I Ching are the subjects of the work of Guo Fengyi, whose poetics open up unexpected possibilities, revealing a micro-universe in direct contact with the macro-universe of which humanity is an integral part.