Stefan Arteni

(Geizan )

calligraphy
and the
scripto-pictoric works
I

SolInvictus Press 2008

Being the record of a hand-held tool, pictures are chirographic
and largely indexicalities of the forces producing them.
Goran Sonesson

Arteni demonstrates various calligraphy brush techniques

 Grasp tradition in one hand
and grasp life in the other…
Shi Lu

Arteni's art sprouted in the bitter soils of an East-Central Europe haunted by horrors , in the
shadows of hegemonic ideologies, in the cultural climate of borderlands rooted in latency
and limological uncertainties. The geographic accident of being intermediate between West
and East - chance [fatum] is etymologically linked to fate - defines coexistence within the
Self of two or more 'here-and-now'. Being somewhere in-between, leads to simultaneous
incorporation in more than one culture, to inner multiplicity, to an interplay of multiple parallel
and distributed identity constructions and to the metaphor of form as secure multi-ontology
assertion. It is a matter of having to forge a communication which opens to a singular play of
the visual, a play that spells out the paradoxicality built into the recomposition of painterly acts
by means of parallel transclassic operations which activate and adopt a variety of incongruent
formal devices and domains, however strange this may seem in view of the Procustean
mindset of the contemporary art world. With an inherent heterarchical outlook and a flâneur's
eye for chance, Arteni juxtaposes the 'look from within' and the 'look from without',
transcending the horizons of each particular cultural contexture, while non-synchronous
tendencies within styles bring about formal mutation.

Rooted in Southeast European, Western and Far Eastern spirituality, Arteni's

polycontextural stylistic matrix allows room for a heterarchic play and recursive catenation of
image structures where painterly time and painterly space - a topology of interlacings - may
be envisioned as a polyphonic monologue. Michel Serres remarks: "An object…is…
polychronic, multitemporal, and reveals a time that is gathered together, with multiple pleats".
Seeing the world through
action-intuition
( , koiteki chokkan)
implies forming the world
through action-intuition…

We act through seeing, and we

see through acting…
Nishida Kitarō
Seal carving

Work in a private collection

One cannot paint the void
without painting the
fullness!
On ne peut peindre le vide
sans peindre le plein !

René Laubiès. 2001.

"Aphorismes," in Ritratti e
Aforismi / Portraits et
Aphorismes. [Bilingual, Italian
and French], Morgana
Edizioni, Firenze, [French to
English translation by Troy
Harris].
 A New York collector's room
dedicated to Arteni's work

Art is an infinite game, an intricate

kaleidoscope of games being played. Art is
poiesis-autopoiesis, and all its participants
are poietai - makers. Autopoiesis
generates boundaries - infinite play plays
with boundaries and rules. There is a nexus
of supportive relations between
formalization and play as well as within their
chiastic reversal, the play of formalizations.
 To be otherwhere, to be otherwise…
Massimo Campigli

Far Eastern Calligraphy Art

Having felt limited by the inadequacy of the Western mainstream avantgarde paradigm and its memetics of
instability as well as by the accepted notions premised on the subservient role of painterly discourse, Arteni
turned elsewhere for inspiration and stylistic approaches. It is exactly the sense of being an outsider that
allows Arteni to observe with detached curiosity. The utter apartness (Abgeschiedenheit) of art amplifies the
genealogy of form. Classical revivalist concerns are merged with other traditions. These include the art of the
Far East. They also include protoscripts and folk art - where the synchronicity of figurative pictures and
abstract motifs may appear in the same sequence, a dual capacity that has been developed in pre-modern
cultures throughout the ages - and a variety of visual material re-valued by juxtaposition and viewed as
empty signifier.

Arteni’s interest in calligraphy began in high school. He studied with Chinese, Korean, and Japanese
teachers, and is now pursuing calligraphy with Professor Yusho Tanaka (Setsuzan), Director of the
Department of Calligraphy, Faculty of Literature, Daito Bunka University, Tokyo, one of Japan's foremost
Living Masters and president of the Nihon Shodo Geijutsu Kyokai (The Japan Calligraphy Art Association)
founded by Professor Kamijo Shinzan, a pupil of Miyajima Eishi and one of Japan's top calligraphers. Arteni
has been awarded in 2005 the highest rank, SHIHAN (Master Teacher), by The Japan Calligraphy Art
Association. It is tradition that the teacher gives the student an art name which points to the student's nature.
In 2005 Arteni received the special art name GEIZAN [meaning Art Mountain] from Yusho (Setsuzan) Tanaka
Sensei. Arteni was given a part of the Teacher's art name, ZAN [meaning Mountain,] as a symbol of spiritual
succession. The Association traces its lineage to 1887, when a young Miyajima Eishi crossed the sea to study
with Chang Lien Ch'ing [Chang Yü-chao (Zhang Yuzhao)], a representative Chinese calligrapher who had
succeeded in blending all schools of stelae writing into an unique style. Each generation develops new
interpretive strategies and searches deep into the meta-artistic logic of visual forms as such or of graphic
systems underlying calligraphic styles. Professor Yusho Tanaka (Setsuzan), for example, has ventured into a
creative stylistic retrieval of bamboo and wooden strips inscriptions.
 NIHON SHODO GEIJUTSU KYOKAI
(JAPAN CALLIGRAPHY ART ASSOCIATION)

Chang Lien Ch’ing [Chang Yü-chao (Zhang Yuzhao)]

|
Miyajima Eishi Hidai Tenrai
\ / |
Hidai Nankoku
Kamijo Shinzan
|
Yusho Tanaka (Setsuzan)

|
Stefan Arteni (Geizan )

Setsuzan Sensei and Arteni

(the hanging scroll is a
calligraphy by Setsuzan
Sensei)
Arteni’s Shihan Certificate and Plaque, and the final examination work
Arteni’s 1996 calligraphy,
winner of the Japan
Foreign Affairs Minister’s
grand prize
The 2005 award ceremony ending the calligraphy competition organized by the Japan
Calligraphic Art Academy in Tokyo and the Japan Calligraphy Center in Los Angeles:
Arteni was awarded the Japan Foreign Affairs Minister’s grand prize for the second
time
Setsuzan Sensei and
Arteni next to Arteni's
2005 prize-winning
calligraphy (Los
Angeles, November
2005)
 Vibrant certainty
its touch so fine, making a sign
peak and abyss on the same line
Henri Michaux

Calligraphy is an unique art in whose medium-scape even written words can function
iconically. Like calligraphers in earlier centuries, one draws inspiration from ancient
calligraphy styles. It is a confrontation between the calligrapher and the form. In Zen
terms, the form becomes the calligrapher’s koan.

Handwriting is a long trained motor skill resulting in well co-articulated shapes like
strokes and loops. Like most periodic motor behavior, graphic skills may be conceived
of as the outcome of non-linear coupled oscillators model resulting from the nonlinear
coupling between two orthogonal oscillatory components, identifying stable states
(or attractors) in graphic skills. To sum up, both performance and degradation in
handwriting find a unifying concept with the notion of stability, a hallmark in dynamical
systems theories, a subtle interplay between stable patterns and the necessity to
adopt less stable shapes and their co-articulation as attractors of underlying
coordination dynamics that govern graphic performance.
.
Gesture, which belongs to the ‘sphere of action’, is – to use Giorgio Agamben’s
formulation – ‘the staging of a mediacy, the becoming-visible of the means as
such. It makes manifest human existence as being always within a medium’… It
makes the mediality of the process, of the ‘gesture’ as Agamben defines it, the
theme of its own action and demonstration… movement which enacts and
annotation that holds it in time.
Work in a
private collection
Works in a private collection
Work in a
private collection
Works in a private collection
Calligraphy Triptych, shown at the 2008 Calligraphy Biennale, Seoul, Korea
Work in a private collection
Work in a private collection
Collection Mansfield Freeman and
Davison Center for the Arts, Wesleyan
University, Middletown, Connecticut
Collection Mansfield Freeman and
Davison Center for the Arts,
Wesleyan University, Middletown,
Connecticut
Work in a private collection,
Nara, Japan
Wandering
(a poem by Muso Soseki)
artist’s book

The seal on the front page of

Wandering, and the monotypes, are
based on two Chinese characters
written in seal-script styles, which
form the word "pilgrim":

[like] clouds [over] water

Wandering (a poem by Muso Soseki), artist’s book
Wandering (a poem by Muso Soseki), artist’s book
Wandering (a poem by Muso Soseki), artist’s book
Wandering (a poem by Muso Soseki), artist’s book
Wandering (a poem by Muso Soseki), artist’s book
Wandering (a poem by Muso Soseki), artist’s book
Wandering (a poem by Muso Soseki), artist’s book
Wandering (a poem by Muso Soseki), artist’s book
Wandering (a poem by Muso Soseki), artist’s book
Wandering (a poem by Muso Soseki), artist’s book
Wandering (a poem by Muso Soseki), artist’s book
Wandering (a poem by Muso Soseki), artist’s book
Wandering (a poem by Muso Soseki), artist’s book
Wandering (a poem by Muso Soseki), artist’s book
Wandering (a poem by Muso Soseki), artist’s book
Wandering (a poem by Muso Soseki), artist’s book
Wandering (a poem by Muso Soseki), artist’s book
Wandering (a poem by Muso Soseki), artist’s book
Wandering (a poem by Muso Soseki), artist’s book
Wandering (a poem by Muso Soseki), artist’s book
Wandering (a poem by Muso Soseki), artist’s book
Wandering (a poem by Muso Soseki), artist’s book
Large seal carving and calligraphy scroll:
the play of the chisel or iron brush
Seal carving:
the play of the chisel
or iron brush
Seal carving:
the play of the chisel
or iron brush
Seal carving:
the play of the chisel
or iron brush
A poem by Wang Wei,
large seal carving:
the play of the chisel or iron brush
Large seal carvings:
the play of the chisel or iron brush
Large seal carvings: the play of the chisel or iron brush
Large seal carvings:
the play of the chisel or iron brush