In 1988, Ding Yi started to paint only crosses. Since then, the two motifs ‘+’ and ‘x’ have been his uniform theme.
As Ding Yi recalls: ‘In the late 80s, China’s contemporary art, like Chinese society as a whole, was undergoing a process of transition involving the assault of contemporary Western culture and reflection upon traditional Chinese culture. I needed to rid myself of both the burden of traditional culture that I was carrying and the influence of the pure painting style of early Western modernism. To go back to the starting point of art, to start again from zero. I chose crosses precisely because they are symbolic of a diversity of meanings, and I had used cross threads countless times in my work to mark precisely the coordinates that had to be observed in the process of “binding colors.” It’s both a technical term from the printing industry and a symbol; there’s no space for using symbolic techniques that are able to capture associations. I wanted to filter out all practicality and take painting back to its innate quality of form: The form being the spirit.’
