Film

Ding Yi: Twenty Years of Painting With One Vertical and One Horizontal Stroke

For twenty years, Ding Yi has returned to an elemental visual language built from one horizontal line and one vertical stroke, turning repetition and discipline into a signature form.

What visual starting point does this 2015 Ding Yi film offer for his abstract painting?

This 2015 film introduces Ding Yi through his sustained use of repeated cross marks, formed by intersecting lines. The visual focus shifts from recognising depicted objects to noticing rhythm and structure within abstract painting. The page retains its original video and text, while related interviews with Qu Fengguo and Wu Shan offer further perspectives on line and abstraction in contemporary Chinese painting.

Transcript

For twenty years, Ding Yi has returned to an elemental visual language built from one horizontal line and one vertical stroke, turning repetition and discipline into a signature form.

Related

Qu Fengguo: Painting as Fate

Wu Shan: Thirty-Some Years of Painting, Still Chasing the Elegance of a Line