Painting in the expanded field from the perspective of Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology: a practice-based investigation on Western and Eastern approaches

This doctoral research is rooted in the development of an expanded form of painting and what I refer to as the production of ‘Abstract places’. This in turn is based on my specific cultural background, having lived and worked in both the Far East and the West. To open up the meaning and potential that an expanded concept of painting could have for contemporary painting I have imported certain concepts from Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology. Merleau-Ponty insists that “The body is our general medium for having a world”. In this way, my body is at the centre of my productions. All my works start from my body and are the trace of my existence. I thus perceive my body as an integral part of the production of expanded painting. For my project, phenomenology is itself a tool to be manipulated and reframed from my own embodied cultural perspective. Through a close reading of the work of Far-Eastern visual artists U-fan Lee (1936 - ) and Kunyong Lee (1942 - ) I consider how an Eastern approach nuances and inflects some of the conventional application of Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology. In the same way, in order to develop my concept to create artworks in the expanded field of contemporary painting, I also focus on the works of Western artists Robert Ryman (1930 - ) and Katharina Grosse (1961 - ). In between the Far East and the West, I further consider mixed concepts and fresh insights created by contemporary phenomenology of painting, and attempt to use these concepts in order to extend the current discourse of expanded painting in the multicultural field of the 21st century