Endless 1

About the work

The ground colour represents water among the Five Phases. Metal foil is laid over it, treated with sulphur and exposed to sunlight to change its colour. The sulphur absorbs the sun’s energy and reacts with the foil through oxidation, leaving the trace of fire. Fire above water places the trigram Li over Kan, corresponding to “Before Completion”, the final hexagram of the Book of Changes. Fire cannot dry the water and water cannot extinguish the fire; they cannot assist one another. Yet, although the positions are not appropriate, the firm and the yielding respond to each other. A commentary on the Book of Changes explains that things cannot come to a final end, so the sequence closes with “Before Completion”. “After Completion”, hexagram 63, with Li below Kan, marks the exhaustion of a state; whatever is exhausted must change. Change has no end, so what is not yet complete is not exhausted, and life continues without cease. The title means “without end”. By exploring the instant of disorder within order and its immediate transformations, the work abstracts these images: an ending is also a new beginning. Things change and develop forever, one rising as another falls, in recurring cycles of ceaseless life.