Ziqi Yu (Fanfu)

East and West: Where Art Collides, Reconciles, and Endures.

This artwork is created by Ziqi Yu (Fanfu)

“The greatest mission of art is to enable humanity to see itself.”  So Nietzsche declared.

And long before him, Zhuangzi, with a brush dipped in Eastern ink, reminded us: “Heaven and Earth possess a vast beauty yet say nothing.”

I have often thought that the pursuit of beauty in East and West resembles two great rivers—forever crossing, parting, clashing, and reuniting. They can never be conquered by any single creed nor compelled into a single stream. Their friction is not a flaw; it is the very heart of what makes beauty endure.

The West: Sculpture and Outcry

by artist Ziqi Yu （Fanfu） 

In the West, aesthetics has so often meant tension made visible. Classical Greek sculpture was a hymn to the perfection of the human form; the Renaissance canvas, a theatre where reason conversed with the divine. Kant wrote, “Beauty is a disinterested pleasure.” So the West never flinched from chiselling veins in marble, capturing fleeting light with oil and brush, or inscribing the tragic struggle of man against fate into stone.

Modern Western art has gone further still—transforming aesthetics into battlegrounds of social discourse, where canvases howl and installations provoke. From Picasso’s Guernica to Duchamp’s urinal, Western art remains a mirror—reflecting power, absurdity, revolt, and the restless self. This is the essence of contemporary Western installation art, where provocation is a virtue, and silence is suspect.

The East: Silence and the Beauty of Emptiness

by artist Ziqi Yu (Fanfu)

Yet if the West is a roar carved in granite, the East is a whisper that lodges deep in the soul. Su Shi, the poet, wrote: “Within the absence of all things lies inexhaustible treasure.” A Chinese landscape is never merely mountains and rivers—it is a refuge of the heart. A withered lotus leaf becomes a letter from time; a single brushstroke of blankness speaks louder than a thousand words.

In Eastern aesthetic art, imperfection is cherished; the wabi-sabi spirit finds poetry in cracks and patina. Zen reminds us: what is unsaid can be more compelling than what is shouted aloud. When all ornament is stripped away, what remains? When all colours fade, what still breathes? To see the unseen—this is the East’s deepest gift.

This artwork is created by Ziqi Yu

All things of this world must fade, as doth the moon-led tide in ceaseless wane and swell; as doth the bloom, in time, return to dust; as doth the moss of yesterday yield unto the with’ring leaf of morrow. Wabi-Sabi—the solemn gaze upon this voiceless passing—beareth within its heart a meditation on time, imperfection, and the essence of all things. And lo, its root is found in Zen.

Zen giveth no answer, but biddeth one to sit in stillness. It seeketh not perfection, for perfection is but a phantom, fleeting and untrue. It feareth not the past, for memory itself is a chalice wherein beauty doth abide. Wabi-Sabi and Zen do meet in a union most subtle—an art of the unfulfilled whole: a wall whose plaster doth crumble in age’s embrace, a vessel marred with crack and stain, the wither’d leaves that linger ‘twixt the stones of a dry garden. They speak not, yet are heard; they complete not, yet are understood.

This artwork is created by Ziqi Yu

"Imperfection is the truest form of perfection." A paradox, mayhap, yet herein lieth the soul of Eastern thought. Naught in this world is still, for all must pass—blossom to decay, timber to dust, love to longing, and life itself to ever-moving stream. The beauty of Wabi-Sabi is not to resist this flow, but to find meaning within it.

This is not the austerity of Minimalism, which is born of willful restraint. Wabi-Sabi is no choice but fate itself. It doth not strip away excess, but yieldeth to time’s chisel, wherein every mark and scar becometh its adornment. Its beauty is not drawn by the hand of man, but by the patient breath of years—light weather’d by time, a ruin clothed in gentle decay.

This artwork is created by Ziqi Yu

Zen’s heart is emptiness, yet emptiness is not naught, but space left for what is yet to be. It is the silence that alloweth the whisper to speak, the pause wherein meaning taketh form. The wither’d branch, the broken wall, the stone worn smooth by foot and rain—these be not ruin, but the poetry of time, writ upon the world.

Ever doth man seek to hold fast that which must slip away, yet in the end, what remaineth is only that which the soul hath beheld in silent reverence. Wabi-Sabi of the East is not sorrow, but acceptance most serene—a gentle yielding unto the impermanence of all things. It whispereth unto us: life is as the steeping of tea—bitter in one breath, sweet in the next, and in the end, naught remaineth but the silent lingering of its aftertaste.

by artist: Ziqi Yu

Introduction: Love in Ruins, Bureaucracy in Power

In contemporary aesthetics, we learn to embrace fractures, to read into the cracks. This is no act of resignation, it is a deeper understanding that transcends form. As the Japanese philosophy of Wabi-Sabi teaches us: imperfection, transience, and incompleteness are not shortcomings—they are the most truthful conditions of existence.

But what, then, of today’s social reality?

When we look squarely at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, we do not see compassion. We see algorithmic exclusion, the clinical coldness of bureaucracy, and the loss of the republic’s founding soul.

The Aesthetics of Wabi-Sabi: Discovering Love in Ruin

At TAYGETA Gallery, we curate through the coordinates of Wabi-Sabi—moved not by polish, but by truth.

A crack is not a flaw—it is the trace of history. Peeling is not decay—it is the emergence of truth. But what of our public institutions? These spaces, meant to reflect the human condition, increasingly erase humans altogether.

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by artist: Ziqi Yu

The Silencing of Wabi-Sabi: From Liberty to Lockdown in U.S. Immigration

At its inception, America professed liberty and inclusion as articles of faith. Today, those ideals drown in forms and filter systems—as if even love requires algorithmic approval. This is not a mere policy failure. It is the attrition of cultural conscience.

When families are torn apart at airports, when people are reduced to datapoints, when dreams become case numbers—we are compelled to ask: 

 “Is this still America? Does this nation still light a lamp for the stranger?”

The Political Power of Wabi-Sabi: Aesthetic Truth as Institutional Indictment

by artist: Ziqi Yu

Wabi-Sabi is not a retreat into introspection—it is a mirror exposing the cracks in our institutions.The artist welcomes damage, embraces impermanence. The system conceals, excludes, denies.

Then mustn’t the system learn honesty?

To honestly admit its imperfections. To accept those whom it cannot define. To confront the fact that a rule of law without love is not order, it is domination.

Conclusion: The State Must Learn to See Like the Artist

Art is a mirror, yes—but also the lone light that pierces indifference. A broken bowl can be mended. A torn canvas can become iconic. A soul turned away deserves a place to rest.

True beauty does not lie in perfection—but in the decision to love despite the scars.

by artist: Ziqi Yu

This artwork is created by Ziqi Yu

In an era where the world is increasingly carved into competing blocs of interest—where the language of money has replaced the currency of trust, and where geopolitics has regressed to a cold calculus of perpetual interests rather than enduring friendships—can art, seemingly untimely and unnecessary, still claim its worth?

by Artist: Ziqi Yu

War has not yet begun, but tariffs have already risen like walls. No tanks have rolled into cities, yet supply chains for microchips lie broken. In this new terrain, anxiety mounts, confidence falters, and even the most basic investment in USA is called into question.

And yet—true art has never been the child of comfort.It is born in solitude, refined in darkness, and blooms in the cracks of fractured times.

This artwork is created by Ziqi Yu

In an age riddled with uncertainty, art is not some ornate distraction from reality. It is, in its most essential form, the architecture of the soul’s resistance to chaos. Art gives shape to the inarticulate, grants visibility to the unseen, and restores within each of us a connection to that quiet, unmediated self, so often drowned in the noise of narratives and numbers.

This artwork is created by Ziqi Yu

The work of Yu Ziqi (Fanfu) emerges precisely within this context—not as a scream, but as a whisper that cuts through the dissonance of our times.

He does not paint war, yet his brush records the quiet collapse of a world.He speaks no politics, yet every stroke of emptiness confronts the disorder of an unbalanced age.With brush and ink, he constructs realms of silence—not to flee the world, but to summon something deeper: the capacity to feel across languages, borders, and ideologies.

This artwork is created by Ziqi Yu

For the real crisis we face today is not only economic decline or geopolitical rivalry. It is the hollowing out of values. The numbing of conscience. The erosion of meaning.

Art does not restore supply chains. It does not rewrite trade policy. But it lights a candle in the heart of the disoriented. It does not rebuild broken systems, but it defends the one sanctuary still beyond corruption: the inner world of human dignity.

This artwork is created by Ziqi Yu

Art is not a place to hide. It is the quiet discipline by which the soul repairs itself amid the blaze. In this age of renewed Cold War shadows, to open a book of paintings, to walk through an exhibition, is no longer a passive cultural act. It is an affirmation of hope. A declaration that beauty still matters. That the human spirit is not entirely lost to calculation and competition. 

Even in turbulent times, there is a market for chaos—But so too, a calling for beauty.It may be understated. It may not glitter.But it reaches deeper. And it speaks truer.

This artwork is created by Ziqi Yu