A Digital Moving Mountain

Echoing the grandeur of the ragged horizon formed by distant mountain ranges, footprints of stock market movements depicted on charts outline the essence of the modern global economy. These erratic motions have been captured by the artist Gan Yu's spontaneous splashes of ink. Throughout history civilizations have once hallowed mountains as the home of the gods, and so contemporary society is exalting Wall Street as the temple of the world economy. However, the permanence of the natural world contradicts the transience of the current economic climate. From over a decade of observing economic patterns, artist Gan Yu realized that the global stock market is in fact, history's largest perpetual piece of group action art. New York to London, Hong Kong to Shanghai, nothing interrupts global economic activity, thereby continuously moving and sketching new designs on stock charts. Relying on calculated speculation, professional traders have traditionally been the only drivers of the stock market. However, in the past few decades, participation has broadened to include the wider population, allowing average people to become a powerful force in determining the stock market's performance. To express this character visually, Gan Yu is creating a painting depicts the exact pattern of Dow Jones Industry Average’s 10-year movement from 2000 to 2009. The artist presents a chronologically ordered chart painted by oriental brushes and ink on western canvas detailing Dow Jones' moving history over the first decade of 21st century. One of the symbols for the stock market is mass participation. In order to capture this quality, Gan Yu invites the audiences to write their comments directly on his canvas. The artist’s idea is to bring common wisdom from many others, and let their thoughts and autographs collaborate with the painting. Currently, already more than 170 people have written their personal comments along with signatures in 12 preferred languages directly on canvas. The painting is incomplete when displayed, finished only after the available space has been filled out with comments from observers expressing their views. The artist synthesizes himself, the observers and the artwork, allowing those who may be direct or indirect participants in the stock market to surrender themselves to chance, becoming a subject in the overall theme. Not only does this action manifest itself in art, but also reflects the underlying complexities of globalization.
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Artist's Statement: “Moving Mountains” is Gan Yu’s long-term creative project with10 individual painting series containing more than 1000 artworks to date. It combines unique visual art experimentation with technology, economic and financial market information to realistically record mass sentiments and artistically depict the human desires and investment behavior across the past 15 years of artist Gan Yu’s creative life. “Moving Mountains” reflects the artist’s physical observations and psychological examinations of social and economic phenomenon surrounding him. In this series, the money and tech-driven lines and shapes of natural objects are the iconic representation of a new dynamic of modern society. It explores the crossroads of visual arts, technology, global economics and financial market activities, and discusses the ways in which people are confronted by issues such as our living surroundings and cultural heritage in the midst of human civilization.