…From its interior rise quiet whispers,
Is it the womb of winds?
Sharp swords show in its angular edges,
Their ringing resonance clearer than jasper chimes.
Its great shape seems to move,
Its massive forces seem on the brink of collapse.
Rare forms responding to its hidden ghosts,
A spirit in consort with pent-up wind and thunder…
one stone, one world

The famous poet Bai Juyi (722–846) wrote these words in response to ‘strange rocks’ like this one.

Lifted from the waters of Lake Tai in Jiangsu Province in eastern China, Taihu rocks have been highly valued by Chinese connoisseurs of stone for more than 1000 years.

Ordinarily such rocks are placed in gardens where they are viewed like public sculptures. But in Ah Xian’s sculptures smaller rocks appear in unexpected new positions. Full of twisting peaks and strange cavities, they rise up from the heads of the figures like mineral thoughts or solidified
dreams – physical evidence of the energy-in-process that Chinese call qi.

The sculptures build upon the traditional association of rocks with thoughts of immortality. Here the humans appear to be dead or sleeping – immobilised like monuments within skins of gold. It is the rocks, with their paradoxically fluid forms, that reveal the spirit life within. Here, perhaps, are the ‘quiet whispers’ and ‘hidden ghosts’ of Bai Juyi’s poem.