This caca (tsa-tsa), made in Mongolia in the 19th–20th century, is about 3 cm high and 3 cm in diameter, pressed from a clay mold. Depicting a stupa in relief, it is a votive object used for the accumulation of merit and for making prayers. Now preserved in the Ferenc Hopp Museum of Asiatic Arts in Budapest (inv. no. 2010.15.1), the piece is fragmentary. It reflects the widespread clay ritual culture characteristic of Tibetan Buddhism.
Throughout the long history of Chinese art, jade and stone artifacts were never merely utilitarian objects—they were visual manifestations of cosmic order and ritual structure: the circle symbolizing Heaven, the square representing Earth, and the mountain as the spine of the world. These forms condensed the ancients’ holistic understanding of Heaven–Earth–Mountains–Yin–Yang, and through their material configurations, gave concrete form to abstract cosmological concepts. From the Neolithic era to the Bronze Age, objects such as bi (discs), cong (tubular vessels), ge (daggers), and mountain-shaped ornaments were not only symbols of religious and political power but also microcosms of the world itself—condensing the divisions of heaven and earth, the veins of rivers and mountains, and the transformations of Yin and Yang into tangible, enshrined forms.
Xu Zhen’s “Giant” series takes these culturally, religiously, and politically charged jade and stone objects as its central motif. Yet the works go far beyond mere representation. Through the brush-and-ink system of Chinese painting, Xu transforms these artifacts—once “fixed” within archaeological and museological frameworks—into images imbued with spiritual fluidity. By magnifying and cropping according to form, he detaches the objects from their original archaeological contexts. The expressive gradations, washes, and reserves of ink infuse the hardness and luster of jade, the sedimentation and stillness of history, with perceptible vitality and divinity.
The series’ title “Giant” does not refer to physical scale, but to the spiritual and civilizational weight these objects carry. The giant in Xu’s paintings re-presents the cosmic model while simultaneously manifesting an image “on the verge of appearing”—a liminal state between visibility and concealment, emergence and withdrawal. In this sense, “Giant” is not a restoration of artifacts, but a re-creation grounded in the discourse of traditional painting theory and contemporary art. Drawing upon core notions such as spiritual resonance (chuanshen) and the bone method (gufa), Xu achieves a transformation from the image of an artifact to one of symbolic profundity.
Detail pictures:
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