From June 30th to July 14th, 2019, Long Museum (West Bund) will host an interdisciplinary art exhibition "Spiritual Origin", a collaboration between emerging pianist, Tim Zhang, and artist Li Shurui. The exhibition is organized by Long Museum (West Bund) with Vogue Me as co-organizer. During the exhibition, the audience can experience Li Shurui’s representative paintings such as "Wave and Mindfile Storage Unit" while listening to Tim Zhang’s site-specific piano piece, "Spiritual Origin".

"Spiritual Origin" is a work of art that contemplates spirituality, heritage, and existence. 

The concept of "souls" has been introduced as early as the Paleolithic age in human prehistory. Early humans believed that humans, animals, plants, mountains, rocks, wind, rain, and everything in-between, all possessed a soul. They also believed that the soul exists independently from the body and does not fade with the death of the body. This belief served as the inspiration for animism, a philosophical school that originated and prevailed in the 19th century which holds that all objects are bestowed with life, conscience, and thought. Despite the fact that modern science has long since proved the fundamental differences that exist between life and non-life, this belief still brings unlimited inspiration to artistic creation. 

Today, we generally agree that all things have an origin. From individual grains of sand and dust to living organisms as large as whales, from environments of magma to those of seawater, the things that make up the world are varied and abundant. Yet the very building blocks that make up the world are invisible to the eye; quarks, electrons, photons, and gluons possess a vast amount of information and energy but exist only on the quantum level. These quantum particles are in-turn formed by even smaller groups of objects called "strings." These strings are entangled and vibrate continuously in the sixth-dimensional space, creating various elementary particles through different modes of vibration. This is what the M-theory, the so-called "Theory of Everything," postulates. Even though there is currently no way of validating the M-theory, it coincides with the essence of sound, which is also a mode of vibration. Consequently, the waveforms generated by vibration is how energy is transmitted throughout the universe in the form of sound, light, and heat.

As he was creating his composition for "Spiritual Origins", Zhang chanced upon the Eighteen Tang Mausoleums in current day Xi’an. Being deeply impressed by the funerary paintings and other cultural relics from the Tang dynasty, Zhang took this opportunity to understand them and their impact of future generations. Through his archeological journey, Zhang formed a new perspective and understanding on the soul. In his opinion, the remains of that era have formed a profound impact on future generations; by seeing, touching, and perceiving these artifacts, we have built a bridge that crosses the river of time, communicating with those who existed a thousand years ago. Isn’t this influence the very definition of a "soul that exists independently from the body and one that does not fade with the death of the body"?

If Li Shurui’s painting, "Mindfile Storage Unit", is an expression of the infinite possibilities of "immortality" as defined by future technologies, then Tim Zhang’s musical compositions are abstract tributes to cultural heritage charged with an oriental character and a classical temperament. Technology and abstraction are two concepts that have never been viewed equally side-by-side. Yet here, when they meet under the pretense of art, when the musician seeks to interpret the mysteries of the universe through melodies and vibrations, an "immortal" music that explores the secrets of life from these varying perspectives of technology and abstraction is born.