Fluidity: “art-oriented meta-ontology” in painting practice

This thesis investigates fluidity in painting as both a philosophical framework and a practicebased methodology. It asks how painting may be understood as temporally recursive, materially relational, and a continuously active process that emerges through embodied making, environmental conditions, and cross-cultural dialogue. Situated within contemporary painting discourse, the research brings together studio experimentation, self-reflexive and poetic-critical writing, philosophical inquiry, and comparative case studies to examine how painting ‘self-performs’ through its unique ‘grow-ability’ over time. The project is grounded in my own practice, in which my art works such as Lotus Root (2021), Hui Su (2022), One Scene, Four Images (2023) and the Shadow Series (2024-2025) explore repetition, permeability, contingency, organic matter, trace, temporal layering and ‘belatedness’. These works demonstrate how painting may operate as an assemblage in which materials, gesture, light, sound, memory, and environment function as co-agents in the production of meaning. The thesis places these practical investigations in dialogue with aspects of the philosophies of Henri Bergson (1859-1941), Gilles Deleuze (1925-1995), Hubert Damisch (1928-2017), and Jane Bennett (b. 1957), alongside Chinese cosmological thought, to articulate fluidity as temporal, structural, material, and energetic transformation. Through three paired cross-cultural case studies—Walasse Ting (1929-2010) with Franz Kline (1910-1962), Zhao Wu-Ji (1920-2013) with Philip Guston (1913-1980), and Badashanren (1626-1705) with Helen Frankenthaler (1928-2011)—the thesis argues for a model of cyclical flow and shared perception, challenging linear narratives of influence and cultural opposition. Its original contribution to knowledge lies in proposing fluidity as an artoriented meta-ontology of my painting: a framework that redefines painting through becoming rather than being. By developing fluidity as both a conceptual model and a methodological approach, the thesis offers practitioners a way to rethink painting as an ecology of transformation, relational autonomy, and ongoing self-performance.

Author dc:creator

• Bai, Kefan

• Fine Art
• Painting

Statement dc:rights

• cc_by_nc_nd

Language dc:language

en

Identifier

Bai, Kefan <https://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/view/creators/Bai=3AKefan=3A=3A.html> (2025) Fluidity: “art-oriented meta-ontology” in painting practice. PhD thesis, University of the Arts London.

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk:27089