Moving Ground

A series of eight paintings created with sound by Jia Jing & Passepartout Duo

Focusing on the digital connection between visual art and music, Moving Ground takes raw data from images of Jia Jing’s paintings and converts it into audio that is manipulated through live electronic improvisations. The resulting sounds create a new painting again when an old amplifier’s vibrations move pigments across the artist’s paper. In this way, the performance creates both visual and auditory feedback loops. The vibrations and movements created by a speaker are normally quite subtle, so fairly extreme aesthetics needed to be used to create the vibrations necessary. In other words, this piece is loud, messy, and a physical experience for its audience members.

The performance reinterprets the traditional process of painting by focusing on its temporal nature. The painting process becomes a public display that incorporates improvisatory elements normally present in music. Jia Jing is reacting to the environment in real time, whether it be a response to the vibrations of the canvas, or to the music itself.

Exhibition Opening at Semi-Underground Space

Resulting from a desire to continually introduce other mediums into their practices, Jia Jing and Passepartout Duo began collaborating after meeting during the duo’s residency with AnyOne in the T3 International Art Community in Beijing, China. Eight paintings and an accompanying video were shown for the first time on May 22nd, 2019 at Semi-Underground Space (AnyOne’s dedicated gallery space.)

Sponsored by AnyOne, the project was conceived over tea sipping afternoons, music sharing sessions, and communicating through a Chinese to English translation app.

About Jia Jing / 贾靖

A graduate of the Chengdu Academy of Fine Arts in Oil Painting, Jia Jing moved from his native Sichuan to Beijing in 2008 where he now lives and works. Jia Jing’s work focuses on the abstraction of defined pop culture figures, structural geometries, texts, and a continual research on the nature of oil painting itself.

Jia Jing has been featured in solo exhibitions at Siemens Art Space and Deshan Art Space in Beijing, and in group exhibitions throughout China. In 2014, he was shortlisted for awards from the Organizing Committee of the China Art Industry Expo and the China Foreign Cultural Exchange Association.