Art is making marks in space.
Those marks might be a handprint, a gouge with a stick, a stroke of a paintbrush, chisel marks on marble, or a carved beam spanning two posts. All those marks divide space.
Look at early cave paintings.* Someone made marks. Look at the first picture here by Suh Se Ok (1929–2020). He made marks with ink and brush on paper. Maybe it looks like a pattern of mountain peaks, but the painting consists of the word for “person” (or people), 人, written repeatedly.
Wang Fang-yu (1913–1997) made his marks, intriguingly depicting double dragons. (I had once hoped to study with him, but that was another dream I lost by not moving to New York.) Or look at the incised reliefs on the millennia-old Temple of Dendur. We only know of the people through the marks that they left us.
All this brings us to the present. Ken Okiishi (b. 1978) applies paint onto the surfaces of video monitors that play recordings of late 1990s and early 2000s television. For Okiishi, these broadcasts “serve as underpaintings that loop continuously behind expressionist brushwork,” suggesting connections between gestural painting and the swipes and taps through which we access digital images today.
Ibram Lassaw’s (1913–2003) Kwannon (an alternate Japanese name for Guanyin), consists of welded bronze. He probably had to start with one rod, a mark, and then add another one until he built the entire figure. Or consider Buddha 2 by Sopheap Pich (b. 1971). Strips of rattan form lines that invoke a Buddha standing before us.
Art is about making marks in space. When we see those marks, we are changed.
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People. Suh Se Ok. 1988. Korea. Ink on danji (mulberry paper). 73 5/8 × 73 5/8 in. (187 × 187 cm). TheMet.
https://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/lineages-korean-art/exhibition-objects
Double Dragons. Wang Fang-yu, Chinese, 1913–1997. Ink on paper. 1990. 40 x 70in. (101.6 x 177.8 cm) Other: 32 1/2 x 54 in. (82.6 x 137.2 cm). Brooklyn Museum
https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/opencollection/objects/147373
The Temple of Dendur. Roman Period. Completed by 10 BCE. From Egypt, Nubia, Dendur, West bank of the Nile River, 50 miles South of Aswan. Aeolian sandstone. Temple proper: H. 6.40 m (21 ft.); W. 6.40 m (21 ft.); L. 12.50 m (41 ft.); Gate: H. 8.08 m (26.5 ft.); W. × 3.66 m (12 ft.); D. 3.35 m (11 ft.). Given to the United States by Egypt in 1965 and awarded to The Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1967. TheMet.
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/547802
gesture/data. Ken Okiishi. 2014. Oil and chroma key video paint, two LCD monitors, and two-channel standard- and high-definition video (color, sound; varying durations). Duration. Left screen: 12:21 min. Right screen: 75:13 min. MoMA
https://www.moma.org/collection/works/180678
Kwannon. Ibram Lassaw. 1952. Medium. Welded bronze. 6′ 1/2″ x 43″ x 29″ (184.2 x 109.2 x 73.7 cm). MoMA.
https://www.moma.org/collection/works/81118
Buddha 2. Sopheap Pich (born Battambang, Cambodia 1971). 2009. Cambodia. Rattan, wire, dye. H. 100 in. (254 cm); W. 29 in. (73.7 cm); D. 9 in. (22.9 cm). TheMet.