Artist: Bay Tang Jiaxin

Bay Tang Jiaxin (China, b. 1995) holds a Master of Arts degree from the Royal College of Art in the UK and currently lives and works in Changsha. Influenced by her background in printmaking, the qualities of paper have become central to her artistic language, allowing the material to convey her exploration of the blurred existence between space and time. In her Pierced Paper series, Tang uses a needle to lift the fibers of paper, creating an undulating surface through repetitive actions. These acts embody the passage of time, with the resulting texture and visual-tactile resonance reflecting her state of mind during the creative process and her inquiry into subspaces. Her work The Stone of Another Mountain has been collected by the Jiangxi Art Museum.

The exhibition title Array of Thorns combines the artist’s direct intervention with the material and the structured, meticulous visual patterns that emerge. “Thorns” signify the physical marks left on the surface of the paper through piercing, while “Array” reflects the intricate, grid-like visual structure of the compositions. Ancient Chinese battle formations often relied on the relationships between yin, yang, and the five elements. In The Art of War, Sun Tzu wrote, “The army has no constant formation, just as water has no constant shape,” emphasizing harmony between timing, geography, and human factors. Similarly, Array of Thorns reveals the artist’s concept of behavior-based creation through repetitive, array-like actions. Each mark left by the needle embodies the concept from the I Ching that “change is constant,” recording the rhythm of the artist’s body and mind. The destructive act of piercing contrasts with the fragility of paper, achieving a delicate balance between breaking boundaries and meticulous craftsmanship in art.

Paper piercing, as a unique emerging art form, has roots in the invention of paper and its associated crafts, closely related to traditions like papercutting, printmaking, and decorative bookmaking. This technique involves manually piercing, cutting, or lifting the fibers of paper using needles, blades, or other sharp tools. The physical intervention highlights the interaction between artist and material, with the resulting fiber burrs and perforations offering a dual sensory experience of sight and touch. This technique creates a distinctive sense of depth and spatiality. Tang’s practice draws from late 20th-century movements in performance art and minimalism, especially those focusing on repetition, temporality, and materiality. Korean artist Park Seo-Bo’s Ecriture series, for example, emphasizes the traces of time and physicality through repetitive manual writing. Tang’s creations bring a multi-layered meaning, resonating with Western minimalism’s attention to repetitive gestures, while the physical transformations of paper reflect post-minimalist explorations of material properties. The fibrous burrs left by piercing embody both emptiness and fullness, blurring the boundary between “existence” and “void,” echoing the essence of blank space in Eastern aesthetics.

Tang Jiaxin emphasizes the manifestation of behavior over specific emotions or imagery. A blank sheet of paper serves as a stage, and Array of Thorns becomes a chess game with her subconscious. Each act of piercing paper represents both a direct intervention into the material and a process of self-observation and documentation. Technically, this process demands extreme patience and time, akin to a form of spiritual practice. Tang believes that the act itself is more significant than the visual outcome. Unlike traditional creations that rely on “expression,” her approach prioritizes the purity of the creative process. Through the logic of repetitive actions, she explores a more fundamental artistic language. Tang reduces the design element of the composition, focusing on the organic emergence of burrs and the natural hue of the paper. The directional orientation of the burrs creates shifts in light and shadow, while her experimentation extends to self-made paper, transforming pierced paper into a three-dimensional form. Tang acknowledges the inherent uncertainty in this process, often feeling dissatisfied with the final visual result. However, the journey itself allows her to delve deeper into the psychological state of creation, exploring the profound relationship between creative actions and material attributes, ultimately evoking an emotional resonance from viewers.

In Bay Tang Jiaxin: Array of Thorns – 2025 Solo Exhibition, Bluerider ART Taipei · Dunren presents a series of new works. In Pierced Paper 1, the pierced traces are organized into a rational grid, transforming the method into a calm, matrix-like structure. Pierced Paper 2 features more freeform, irregular patterns, with subtle grid marks visible beneath the paper’s surface, creating a contrast between order and chaos. Pierced Paper 3 incorporates pastel pigments, blending the pierced marks with delicate gradients to achieve an exquisitely soft effect.

Array of Thorns is an introspective artistic experiment exploring materials, behavior, and time. The repetitive actions reveal the purity of artistic creation while inviting viewers to enter an overlapping realm of time and space, evoking the meaning of “traces left after events.” Tang approaches her process with a time-oriented perspective, using pierced paper as a highly original language to manifest time and space on the surface of paper, ultimately probing the deeper meaning of existence.