The Single Brushstroke that can be defined is no longer the Single Brushstroke.
— Ye. Zavadskaya, commentary on Shitao, Conversations on Painting (Hua yu lu), Moscow: Nauka, 1978; translated from the Russian.
Artist: Marina Razheva
Date: 2006; repeated on later occasions
Location: Site-independent
Type: Unannounced performance / light intervention
Materials: Video projector, one projected image
Site conditions: A projector stands against a wall opposite a window. The beam crosses the room and passes out through the glass. Outdoors, it travels into open space.
Dimensions / Duration: Variable
Work Description
A light source (a projector) stands by the wall opposite a window. Its beam crosses the room and exits through the glass. One image is projected: a single white brushstroke on a black ground.
Anything that enters the beam becomes a screen and part of the image at the same time: a visitor, a gallery staff member, an open palm, a sheet of paper, the windowpane, a tree or a bird outside. Whoever or whatever enters the beam receives a part of the image and, at the same time, writes its own shadow into it. Were the beam to continue through the wall, the tree beyond would do the same, and so on without end. A speck of dust, a bird and a person are equal before the beam, and each remains itself.
If the projector’s power reaches only as far as the exhibition space, it makes no difference. In thought, the beam continues beyond it, and nothing obstructs it.
Context
The work does not illustrate Shitao’s treatise. The idea of the Single Brushstroke (yi hua) in his Hua yu lu serves as a point of departure. The title is a sentence from the commentary by Ye. Zavadskaya accompanying her Russian translation of the treatise (Shitao, Conversations on Painting, Moscow: Nauka, 1978).
Realization
The work takes the form of an unannounced performance. It has been carried out more than once, in different places, without notice to those present.
No single place or date defines it: every realization is a new occasion, and any space can become its site. The documentation records particular encounters without making any of them the definitive version of the work.
Documentation
Fig. 1. The projected image.
Fig. 2. Documentation of one realization.
Fig. 3. Documentation of another realization, outdoors at night.
The photographs document particular realizations of the work. They are records of individual encounters, not illustrations of a single definitive installation.