At the end of the 1970s, a classically trained Chinese painter, Qiu Deshu, being inspired by the traversing cracks on an aged stone slate pioneered a highly experimental and distinctive approach to the traditional art of Chinese ink. With his profound knowledge of traditional painting and paper mounting techniques, he pushed the expressive power of the xuan paper to an exceptional height, changing the media’s traditionally passive and subsidiary status. By tearing, carving and rubbing, Qiu Deshu creates irregular tears and feathering of the paper that will later bear different color schemes and shapes to suggest landscapes evocative in traditional Chinese paintings.

Qiu Deshu explains his fissuring process as a catharsis effort for his internal trauma. In Fissuring - The Seal of Cosmology Series, we see this internal trauma and frustration felt by the artist during the class struggles of the 1990s transformed into spiritual power. As the fissures represent tears and damages to the xuan paper, they gravitate towards the ambiguous space in the center of the painting, illustrating the ultimate triumph of the artist’s hope for new possibilities and new creation through the powerful composition.