在東亞藝術傳統中，書法自古即是精神、身體與時間交織的實踐：手腕的運動、筆鋒的節奏、墨痕的流動，皆映射個體的生命狀態與感知節律。許炯與荒木經惟的創作，正延續並重塑了這一東方的初始性，以書法與身體為核心語言，展開跨世代的對話。對許炯而言，書法線條是精神成長與文化遷徙的軌跡，每一次落筆都是身體在時間與地域張力中的自我辨認；對荒木，書寫與攝影同樣源自身體經驗，筆觸的狂放、書寫的重複，與肌膚上攝影捕捉的觸感與老去，共同構成對生命、時間與消逝的赤裸凝視。在這裡，書法不只是文字的延展，而是東方身體感知的現代再現：它既承載歷史傳統，也在個體身體中延伸出當代的生命經驗。

荒木經惟（1940 年生於日本東京）的作品，始終以自身生命與身體為核心展開。雖以攝影聞名，荒木的書寫從未是附屬實踐，而是一種終其一生持續進行的日記行為——書寫與拍攝皆源自同一個身體，在時間中反覆留下痕跡。

在妻子陽子離世之後，荒木的書法愈發直接而赤裸。筆觸狂放、斷裂、凌亂，字形在紙面上傾倒、蔓延，情緒不再經由修辭節制，而是以身體動作被即時釋放。書寫在此不再只是語言的載體，而成為一種與哀傷共存的身體實踐——顫抖的手、失序的節奏、反覆落筆的遲疑，皆指向一個正在老去、卻仍持續感受世界的身體。

在拍攝蝸牛的人體攝影中，緩慢移動的生物貼附於人體肌膚之上，使速度、重量與觸感被極度放大。肉身不再作為欲望的投射對象，而是一具會感知、會衰老、終將走向消逝的身體。皮膚的紋理、黏附與移動的痕跡，在畫面中構成關於時間滲透的隱喻——生命並非瞬間的事件，而是在不可逆的過程中，被身體一寸寸承受。

在長達半世紀的創作生涯中，荒木經惟持續以極高強度進行書寫與拍攝。對他而言，產量並非效率的象徵，而是生存本身的證明：只要仍能書寫、仍能按下快門，身體便仍與世界維持連結。這種近乎執念的持續行動，使創作成為一種對抗老去與消逝的方式。

荒木的作品最終不指向形式上的完成，而是指向一種赤裸的存在狀態——書法、人體藝術與觀看在此共同構成一場關於生命、時間與身體耗損的現場記錄。藝術不再是對死亡的超越，而是在老去之中，持續留下仍然活著的痕跡。

荒木經惟是國際間最受認可、最具成就的日本攝影家之一。自1960年代出道以來，他不斷探索攝影、書寫與人體影像的多重表現方式，已出版逾 350 本個人作品集，涵蓋攝影、書寫、日記與藝術文集等類型，並持續每年創作，堪稱日本乃至全球最具產能的藝術家之一。荒木的創作不僅以高產量著稱，更因其直面生命、情感與肉身的勇氣，而獲得廣泛國際認可。他的作品被多間重要美術館典藏，包括東京都現代美術館、倫敦泰德美術館、洛杉磯現代藝術博物館、巴黎吉美亞洲博物館，以及紐約現代藝術博物館。此外，其作品亦常見於國際攝影雙年展與重要個展中，成為日本當代藝術在全球舞台上的標誌性存在。荒木的藝術影響跨越攝影媒介本身，對後世影像藝術家及書寫實踐皆有深遠啟發。

許炯（1983年生於中國杭州）畢業於以引領東方當代美學聞名的中國美術學院書法系，現居並工作於北京。藝術家自幼接受紮實的書法與中國畫訓練，並基於對西方當代藝術的濃厚興趣，長期進行跨文化的研究、實驗與實踐。

許炯的〈春之祭〉系列，是一場以身體為起點的長程書寫，關於精神成長、文化遷徙與自我辨認。藝術家將書法線條從敘事與字義中釋放，使其成為身體運動的痕跡——手腕的起落、呼吸的節奏與力量的消耗，共同構成承載生命狀態的能量場。個體經驗因此不再只是被表述，而是在時間、地域與文化張力中，被身體反覆實踐與感知。

〈春之祭·終不似少年遊〉（2018）以四聯巨幅呈現精神成年的關鍵時刻。層疊的草書「花」來自重複而密集的書寫勞作，筆勢中的遲疑、衝撞與耗損，對應著身體逐漸意識到自身的限制。當藝術家清醒地感知「不再少年」，他所懷念的並非青春本身，而是一種未曾被身體完全實現的可能性。創作於是成為一種補償性的身體儀式，在混沌與繁茂之中，為自身確立持續存在的勇氣與座標。

〈春之祭·肖像〉（2018）則將身體推向自我辨認的核心。以「我」為頭腦中樞，並置「東」與「西」於軀幹之中，身體被轉化為一個可被閱讀的文化與精神結構。肖像不再再現面容，而是透過身體的拆解與重組，完成對自我、文化位置與感知方式的清醒定位。在〈春之祭·奇蹟〉（2017）與〈春之祭·發〉（2018）中，書法線條徹底成為與天地氣韻同頻的身體行動。筆觸不再描繪物象，而是記錄身體在能量升騰與衰減之間的狀態轉換，藝術因此回歸為一種關於生生不息的儀式性實踐。

24件一組的新作〈知了〉（2025）將時間的感知拉回至日常而殘酷的尺度。藝術家反覆書寫「知了」二字，使書寫成為一種持續消耗的身體行為。短暫而高亢的蟬鳴，對照人之身體在日復一日中的老去；而文字則在千年書寫傳統中不斷被重寫、變形與延續。作品在此構成三重時間的交疊——蟬的生命、人的身體、文字的長時段——使有限生命得以與歷史展開對話。

〈小王和大王〉（2017–2023）以自我弒知音的隱喻，指向主體內部的斷裂經驗。當知音轉為流動不居的自我，這場決裂不只發生於思想層面，也體現在身體姿態的轉變之中。作品在諧謔敘事與清寂內核之間，揭示精神成長所伴隨的耗損與代價，並拋出一個無法和解的提問：在持續變化的身體與自我之中，是否仍可能存在恆定的共鳴？

〈游獨樂寺〉（2016）源於藝術家首次面對北方精神景觀的震撼。遼代木構與巨佛所構成的沈默時空，使身體的移動與停駐變得格外自覺。藝術家以最樸拙的線條回應那份清冽而蒼茫，形成一種開放而靜謐的「許炯式留白」——畫面所留下的空間，正對應著身體在場時的呼吸、凝視與自省。

許炯的創作歷程可分為多個階段：草書時期（2012–2016）、賈島系列（2016–2018）、春之祭（2017–2018）、拼貼創作（2019–2024），並自2020年起進入持續發展中的新草書時期（New Cursive），展現其在書寫方法與視覺結構上的不斷推進。重要聯展包括2022年桃園橫山書法藝術館《書法雙年展》，以及德國慕尼黑 Galerie Nagel Draxler 聯展《Morgenrot und Abendbrot》。重要個展包括2023年《在每一個宇宙遇見你》，穹究堂，北京；2023年《帶我去遠方》，南城美術館，沖繩，日本；2022年亞紀畫廊《山水 2022 SS》；2019年亞紀畫廊《自畫像》；2017年亦安畫廊（台北）《我看見賈島了嗎？》。2015年出版草書系列作品集《萬物想》。

In East Asian artistic traditions, calligraphy has long been a practice where body, spirit, and time converge. The movement of the wrist, the rhythm of the brush, and the flow of ink register lived perception and bodily presence. The works of Xu Jiong and Araki Nobuyoshi extend this lineage into the present, using calligraphy and the body as shared languages to form a cross-generational dialogue.

For Xu Jiong, calligraphic lines trace processes of spiritual growth and cultural migration; each stroke becomes an act of bodily self-recognition shaped by time and place. For Araki, writing and photography emerge from the same corporeal source. His unrestrained brushwork, repetitive inscription, and photographic attention to aging skin together articulate a direct confrontation with life, time, and disappearance. Calligraphy here is no longer merely textual, but a contemporary embodiment of Eastern sensory experience.

Araki Nobuyoshi (b. 1940, Tokyo, Japan)has consistently placed his own life and body at the center of his practice. Although best known for photography, writing has always been integral to his work, functioning as a lifelong diaristic act. Following the death of his wife, Yoko, Araki’s calligraphy became increasingly raw and fragmented—its collapsing characters and disrupted rhythms transforming writing into a bodily practice that coexists with grief and aging.

In his photographic works featuring snails on the human body, slowness, weight, and touch are intensified. The body is no longer an object of desire, but a sensate organism bearing the gradual infiltration of time. Across more than five decades of sustained production, Araki’s relentless act of writing and photographing becomes a form of existential proof: as long as the body can act, it remains connected to the world.

Araki Nobuyoshi is widely recognized as one of the most accomplished and internationally acclaimed Japanese photographers. Since emerging in the 1960s, he has continuously explored multiple modes of expression across photography, writing, and representations of the body. He has published over 350 books, encompassing photography, calligraphy, diaries, and artistic writings, and continues to produce work annually—making him one of the most prolific artists in Japan and internationally. Araki’s significance lies not only in his extraordinary output, but also in his uncompromising confrontation with life, emotion, and corporeality. His works are held in major institutional collections, including the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, Tate, the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, the Guimet Museum of Asian Art, and The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Frequently featured in international photography biennials and major solo exhibitions, Araki has become a defining presence of Japanese contemporary art on the global stage. His influence extends beyond photography, exerting a lasting impact on subsequent generations of image-makers and writing-based artistic practices.

Xu Jiong (b. 1983, Hangzhou, China) graduated from the Calligraphy Department of the China Academy of Art, an institution widely recognized for shaping contemporary Eastern aesthetics. He currently lives and works in Beijing. Trained from an early age in calligraphy and traditional Chinese painting, Xu has developed a sustained cross-cultural practice informed by a strong engagement with Western contemporary art, combining research, experimentation, and long-term artistic inquiry.

Xu Jiong’s Spring Monster series unfolds as a long-term, body-centered practice of writing that addresses spiritual maturation, cultural migration, and processes of self-recognition. By releasing calligraphic lines from narrative and semantic meaning, writing becomes a direct trace of bodily movement—the rise and fall of the wrist, the rhythm of breath, and the expenditure of physical force together forming an energetic field that carries lived states of being. Experience is no longer simply represented, but repeatedly enacted through the body within tensions of time, geography, and culture.

Spring Monster · Youthless (2018), presented as a monumental four-panel work, marks a decisive moment of spiritual adulthood. Dense layers of the cursive character “flower,” generated through sustained and repetitive labor, register hesitation, collision, and exhaustion, mirroring a body gradually becoming conscious of its own limits. What is mourned is not youth itself, but unrealized bodily potential, transforming creation into a compensatory ritual that affirms continued existence. In Spring Monster · Portrait (2018), the body becomes a readable structure of identity: the “I” functions as a cognitive center, while “East” and “West” are inscribed within the torso, reconfiguring portraiture as an act of cultural and perceptual self-positioning.

In Spring Monster · Marvel (2017) and Spring Monster · F… (2018), calligraphy fully assumes the role of bodily action attuned to cosmic rhythms, recording shifts between the accumulation and dissipation of energy. The later work Zen (2025), comprising twenty-four pieces, compresses time into daily repetition through the sustained writing of the characters “cicada,” staging an encounter between the brevity of life, the aging body, and the longue durée of written language. Works such as Little King and Big King (Self-Portrait) (2017–2023) further address internal rupture and self-division, revealing the costs of spiritual growth, while Dule Temple (2016) reflects an encounter with northern China’s spiritual landscape, where restraint and emptiness correspond to breath, stillness, and embodied presence.

His artistic trajectory unfolds through several interrelated phases—Cursive (2012–2016), Jia Dao (2016–2018), Spring Monster (2017–2018), Collage (2019–2024), and the ongoing New Cursive phase initiated in 2020—which together reflect a continuous process of testing, dismantling, and reconfiguring calligraphy as a contemporary bodily and visual language. Rather than marking discrete stylistic shifts, these phases articulate an enduring effort to refine writing as an evolving system shaped by movement, perception, and cultural displacement, with the New Cursive phase in particular demonstrating Xu’s sustained commitment to extending the parameters of contemporary calligraphy. His work has been presented internationally in both institutional and gallery contexts, including the Calligraphy Biennial at Hengshan Calligraphy Art Center (2022) and Morgenrot und Abendbrot at Galerie Nagel Draxler, Munich, as well as solo exhibitions such as Meeting You Again at Qiong Jiu Gallery, Beijing (2023), Home at Nanjo Art Museum, Okinawa (2023), Landscape 2022 SS at Each Modern (2022), Self-Portrait at Each Modern (2019), and I Saw Jia Dao at Aura Gallery, Taipei (2017). His publication All Things Are in Me (2016) documents works from the Cursive period, underscoring writing as the foundational, embodied practice through which his artistic inquiry continues to unfold.

Art Basel Hong Kong 2026

Insights 3C35Araki Nobuyoshi, Xu Jiong

Insights 3C35
Araki Nobuyoshi, Xu Jiong