Palimpsest | 重写本

By Loy Luo

In textual studies, a palimpsest originally referred to a manuscript—typically on parchment—whose surface had been scraped or washed clean for reuse. This practice arose out of the practical need to conserve materials. Over time, the term has been widely adopted in disciplines such as architecture, archaeology, and geomorphology to describe states of continual reuse and transformation. A palimpsest often bears traces of layered histories, each inscription annotating or obscuring the ones beneath it.
 
My creative process is, almost without exception, one of rewriting—but not in the sense of erasure and replacement. Rather, it is a deliberate refusal to erase: a practice of layering. I choose to preserve original traces and allow them to coexist with new inscriptions, overlapping and interacting across time. As the writing accumulates, earlier marks become increasingly obscured, harder to decipher. Yet as legibility diminishes, perceptibility is paradoxically heightened. It is as if the written word contains an energy field independent of semantic meaning—one that persists even when no longer readable. Like fragments of history buried by time, the more elusive they become, the more urgently they call for excavation and interpretation. The resulting material strata exceed the limits of visual aesthetics, unfolding into more complex dimensions of meaning.
 
As an artist trained in traditional Chinese calligraphy since childhood, I do not merely rewrite; I foreground the act of writing itself. This gesture has long become embedded in my bodily memory—a tactile impulse that moves from hand to heart. In the Palimpsest series, writing functions not only as a process of inscription, but as an embodied form of cultural memory and a continuous inquiry into the structures of language, gesture, and visual perception.
 
Visually, the series draws from the dynamic interplay of concealment and revelation in Chinese calligraphy, while also incorporating minimalist order, material texture, collage logic, and the expressive energies of abstraction. These heterogeneous elements collide and coalesce, articulating a cultural state in which writing and rewriting, erasure and emergence, coexist in ongoing tension and transformation.


重写本 | Palimpsest
 
罗一

在文本研究中，“重写本”（palimpsest）原指将卷轴或羊皮纸上的文字刮除或洗净后，重新书写的文献。最初，这一做法出于节省材料的实际需要。随着时间推移，这一术语被广泛引用至建筑学、考古学与地貌学等领域，用以描述某种被反复利用、不断改写的状态。重写本往往隐含着历史层层覆盖、彼此注解的痕迹。
 
我的创作几乎无一例外地是一种“重写”的过程。但并非“擦除后的复写”，而是“有意识的不擦除”——一种不断叠写的实践。我选择保留原有笔迹，让它与新的书写层层交叠共生。随着写的推进，旧有痕迹逐渐被遮蔽，变得难以辨识。然而，文字的“可读性”被削弱的同时，其“可感性”反而增强，仿佛文字自身拥有一种不依赖语义的能量场，即使无法被解读，依然保持其感召力。如同那些被时间掩埋的历史碎片，越是模糊，越激发探寻的冲动。这种层叠带来的肌理，也因此突破了视觉美感的单一维度，转化为更复杂的意义系统。
 
作为一位自幼接受传统书法训练的东方艺术家，我不仅“复写”，更关注“写”本身。这一动作早已嵌入我的身体经验，成为一种由手至心的触觉惯性。在“重写本”系列中，写既是图像的生成，也是文化记忆的再现，是对语言结构、身体动作与视觉系统的持续追问。
 
在视觉呈现上，这一系列融合了中国书法中“隐”与“显”的流动逻辑，并融入极简主义的秩序感、材料肌理的物质性、拼贴装置的构成方式以及抽象表现的自由能量。这些异质元素彼此碰撞又共生，指向一种“写”与“重写”、消解与生成并存的文化状态。