Leonardo da Vinci

Bodhidharma

Cultural Sediment by Long-Bin Chen

There are three levels of reading: you first need to understand and digest the content of a book. The second level is for you to interpret the concepts. Then, “The pinnacle of reading occurs when the contents of a book are internalized to become one’s own words, actions, thoughts, and character.” (Chen)

People can tell you the names of some of the important philosophers in the human history, but they usually cannot tell you what books have been written by these famous philosophers or quote their statements. However, the thoughts of these philosophers have been internalized and have influenced everyone in the society.

“Reading is the cumulative and internal process by which the reader absorbs knowledge.” (Chen) A civilized society comes from cultural sediments that formed over the past hundreds to thousands of years, “just as millennia of accretion and extrusion create textures and patterns in rocks and boulders” (Chen).

This piece of art work is created from destroying books and transforming them into art. Recycled books collected from public libraries are used as the main materials to create the layers and the textures of the “rock”, the walls and the characters of the work, and this process also symbolizes the transformation from culture to nature.

You will find two characters inside the two semicircular book walls, the first one is Bodhidharma and the second one is Leonardo da Vinci. The two characters symbolize oriental and western cultures. In this era that focuses too much on professionalism, Leonardo da Vinci represents a knowledgeable person. In an era of information explosion, Bodhidaharma represents wisdom that does not focus on words, but on mind.