81 Chops

Creation Time: 2015 Size: 244x122x5cm Material: iron tube, magnet

I attempted to cut out a section of steel pipe of the one-meter length based on eyeballing. I experienced failure over and over again. It was not until the eighty-first attempt that I finally got an exact one-meter tube.

Coincidentally, the eighty-first time is metaphorical in the context of Chinese culture, and the experience of the Tang Dynasty monk Xuanzang smuggled into India to seek the Buddhist scriptures was adapted into the novel Journey to the West. In the story of the novel, the Tang monks went through eighty-one calamities before finally obtaining the True Scriptures, so the eighty-first time defeat is regarded as an ultimate tempering and testing.

Translated by Wei Yihan