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Sleepers

Luo Fei 发表于 2009/12/18 — 1条评论

潜行者

Sleepers
Luo Fei (Curator, Artistic Director at TCG Nordica)

After several changes, our eleven participating Yunnan artists finally settled on the name “Sleepers” for this exhibition. This name denotes inconspicuousness, diligence, training and experience, and it also makes the allusion that these people are under cover in a certain environment, waiting for action, which fits with the real state of mind among the artists in this exhibition. This word calls to mind two other words, “sleeper cell” and “prison break”.

The widespread popularity of the Chinese TV series Sleepers illustrates the nature of our interest in historical truth. Toss in the American hit series Prison Break, and we’ve got two main courses that once again gently place people’s love for conspiracy theories on the table.

Conspiracy theories have two types of sources. One is secular; liberalist political science is highly skeptical of human nature and state power. Where there is power, there is conspiracy. Examples of this include the recent widespread conspiracy theory that the global financial crisis was actually carefully planned by a certain American corporation. There is also the theory that the US government planned the 9/11 attacks to manufacture an excuse for war. The most famous conspiracy theory is the one that John F. Kennedy was assassinated by a secret American government organization. Another source for conspiracy theories is the magnification of certain concepts of Christianity. The theory goes that Satan secretly controls the world, and that every event and symbol is part of the war in the spirit world, ideas influenced by the concept of the kingdom of heaven and the apocalypse. One such conspiracy theory was that the old logo of Proctor & Gamble contained the numbers “666”, and so the company was therefore controlled by Satan worshippers.

The grasp of conspiracy theory in Chinese culture is in no way inferior to that of America. Aside from Sleepers, there is also War and Beauty, Emperor Kangxi, Yongzheng Dynasty and Infernal Affairs (remade by Martin Scorsese as The Departed), as well as ancient and highly developed conspiratorial methods such as the “hooking method”, The Book of the Long and Short and Machiavellian military stratagems. Writer Ran Yunfei has said that The Art of War and all Chinese stratagems boil down to just five words: pitfalls, disguises, twists, deceptions and entrapment. Though this isn’t a pleasant thought, consider our educational environment – from preschool to elementary school, college to workplace, no place is lacking in intrigue or positioning.

Philosopher Karl Popper explained conspiracy theories as the “typical result of the secularization of religious superstitions”. He said that “Homer conceived the power of the gods in such a way that whatever happened on the plain before Troy was only a reflection of the various conspiracies on Olympus. The conspiracy theory of society is just a version of this theism, of a belief in gods whose whims and wills rule everything. It comes from abandoning God and then asking: ‘Who is in his place?’ His place is then filled by various powerful men and groups – sinister pressure groups, who are to be blamed for having planned the great depression and all the evils from which we suffer.”

Unfortunately, people would rather live in fear of a conspiracy behind everything bad that happens, rather than that there is a hidden grace behind every story. The tattered, horrified mental outlook of contemporary man is abundantly clear, as if one day we are certainly bound to capsize the boat in the sewer. So, is there some form of grace that can overcome the conspiracy? Is there a shore of respite that can replace the sewer? The philosophical implications of Prison Break are more suited to the aspirations of “sleepers”. It’s just like one poet wrote: “the most careful prison escape plan is hatched in the mother’s womb.”

In The Gospel According to Matthew, Jesus says to be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves. This touches on the issue of moral character among sleepers. If these eleven artists are really what they profess to be, then they must have sleeper motives, namely, they are laying low in their environments or systems, shrewdly seeking out the opportunity to find their own unique artistic languages. Luckily, their plots are directed at art, not at other people.

Yang Yijiang and Sha Zhibin, sleepers hiding out in an academic aesthetic, focus on their artistic conceptions; their image styles fall under the law-abiding category. Yang Yijiang uses the subtle, exploratory decoration of body models to touch sensitive nerves. Sha Zhibin uses elegant and melancholic grayscale arrangements between bodies and still objects and bodies and landscapes, to create image associations between them.

Adam Lik Lui, Xiang Weixing and Zhang Yongning, sleepers in the national ideology, all turn their memories and thoughts on the nation’s history into familiar yet strange imagery. Adam Lik Lui’s Lost series places a young, lovely post-80s girl in an abandoned factory from the Great Leap Forward period. The posed photographs highlight the contrasts and absurdities between the two eras. Xiang Weixing’s Idol Box series uses relief carving to place events such as the National People’s Congress and beauty pageants into television sets. The choice of the name “idol box” keenly points out the false faith that arises from people treating media events as idols. Zhang Yongning’s Badge series turns images of children into collector’s badges of political leaders, using this to focus on common individuals, and to insinuate that the notion of political intrigue is now spreading to children.

Wang Yuhui, Zhu Xiaolin, Zhang Zhimin and Hu Jun are sleepers concealed in everyday city life. Wang Yuhui uses the life and play of a humorous dog to present sarcastic takes on the setting of our lives. Zhu Xiaolin’s Life of Games depicts a feeling of senselessness in life. Zhang Zhimin uses a somewhat pained eye to focus on unnoticed things and unexpected scenes. Hu Jun uses depictions of tired and cold marriages to get us to rethink traditional values. These works are all marked by biographical notes, maintaining both affinity and wariness towards everyday city life.

Then there are Li Xuefeng and Zhao Gang, who are sleepers in historical imagery. Li Xuefeng uses a mosaic filter to examine classic historical figures and scenes, using visual blurring to sharpen historical memory. Zhao Gang takes images from the old model operas of the Cultural Revolution and inserts cartoony toy imagery into them.

Because of their expectations towards art, artists are forced to embed themselves as sleepers within reality, from which they can gain a mirror for creation; because of their expectations towards life, many people are forced to embed themselves as sleepers in their situations, from which they can gain a map for making a “prison break”.

These eleven artists are all faithfully playing the role of “sleepers”, sharing their experiences “in hiding” with everyone. Since ancient times, artists have always been a group of active sleepers. They engage in the act of creation through games, explorations, thoughts, accumulated experiences and constantly refined language, all in hopes of making a “prison break” from reality. This process is long, arduous, dangerous and debilitating, with the only comfort coming from the breakthroughs, large or small, that are achieved through creation. The saving grace of art is that it provides these “sleepers” with the idea of a shore to rest on, so that they can imagine the possibility of redemption somewhere beyond reality. This is the enchanting thing about art: the expectations of the “sleepers”, and the great and just “conspiracy theory”.

The above long-winded rant is the foreword for the “Sleepers: Eleven Yunnan Artist Contemporary Artistic Experimentation” exhibition.

December 13, 2009, Spring City
translated by Jeff Crosby

本文中文阅读：http://blog.luofei.org/archives/1501

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The Yunnanese Way

Luo Fei 发表于 2009/12/09 — 1条评论

The Yunnanese Way: The 2nd Dialogue of “Inscape On The Spot” Art Exhibition

Participants:
Guan Yuda (Curator, Art Critic, Professor of Art and Design College of Yunnan University),
Luo Fei (Gallery Director and Curator of TCG Nordica Gallery)
He Libin (Artist, Curator)
Lei Yan (Artist)
Li Youjie (Artist)

Time: 2009, May 17
Add: Kunming Dandi Coffee

Translated by: Wu Yuerong
Proofreaded by: Anders Gustafsson

Professor Guan Yuda (hereinafter referred to as Guan ):

“…modernity is actually the starting point for an inquiry into the relationship between man and nature, people and life itself. Modernity transformed the Western culture. It also saw the emergence of a civil society, and the transformation of people’s daily lives.

In fact, I see this happening in Yunnan as well, mainly through two important developments. One is the early ‘Shen Community’, and artists such as Mao Xuhui. Their landscape paintings was a way of escaping the mainstream ideology. According to the provisions of revolutionary realism, you could only paint peasants, soldiers and ideological motives. And if at that time you wanted to deviate from the mainstream, painting scenery was the best way. That way, you would not break the ideological taboos, but you could put your own consciousness into the art. This was the beginning of modernism and self-conscious art in Yunnan. Mao Xuhui were to bring in subjectivity; and this is modernity. This point is very important, because it is also the reason that he saw a kind of religious loneliness inside Gui Shan. I think this is the main sense of involvement, of ‘Inscape’. And this subjectivity is the most crucial point.”
But I think we should not exaggurate the fact that the experiments of “Kunming Impressionist School” was earlier than Mao Xuhui. Because almost all artists painted landscape in Yunnan at that time; that was a way of life. And many people still do. Secondly, Yunnan itself is far away from the political and cultural center. That’s why Ding Shaoguang, Jiang Tiefeng, and also Wang Xiaobo went to De Hong (note: a town close to the Burmese border). Through the closeness of nature they could escape the mainstream ideology. It is similar with today’s tourism. They came there either to escape the harm from the ideological and commercial capitalism, or to heal their wounds and seek consolation in the landscape. But I think this is a sociological phenomenon. The discussion of art history in terms of subjective consciousness or awakening, and to truly grasp the origins of the modern landscape, is the main point of interest here. 继续阅读 »

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Creating Inscape On The Spot

Luo Fei 发表于 2009/03/21 — 评论

Creating Inscape On The Spot
– On Art Exhibition “Inscape On The Spot”

Written by Luo Fei (TCG Nordica Gallery Director & Curator)

1. About Jingjie(1)

Traditional Chinese culture consists of three strands: Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism. These three strands share the same concerns about the existence and freedom of this life. They are concerned with the value and significance of the individual and their physiological needs, promising that any individual can be elevated through cultivation. The ‘jingjie‘ of life is the essential question, with other questions around it.

In modern Chinese language, the meaning of ‘jingjie‘ can be broken down into two parts. Firstly it has a physical dimension, i.e. the boundary between countries. Secondly it has a metaphysical dimension, it refers to a ‘realm of life’, it is the level or degree reached through meditation on morality, culture, psychology and beauty. By pondering on the cosmos, society and life, it suggests a departure from earthly values and a capturing of the wholeness of an internal exhilaration, described by Confucius as the act of ’sanctifying
personality’. Unfortunately there is no equivalent in the English vocabulary for ‘jingjie’ which is the core concept of this exhibition. Therefore the author will use ‘inscape‘ to refer to the spiritual and artistical nature of the world and also to connect to the theme of landscape which is another vital element of this exhibition. ‘Inscape’(2) is an old English word which refers to the unique inner nature of a person or an object, especially when seen in a work of art.

In traditional Chinese poetry and painting, the theory of inscape took an important position as a definition of spirituality and exerted significant influence upon the thinking of Chinese language. As Wang Guowei, the famous ci poetry critic in the late Qing Dynasty, argued in his Renjian Cihua(also called The World of Poetry), ‘The most important thing in ci poetry is inscape. A high level of art is reached when there is an inscape… Some are focused on creating inscape, others writing inscape. This is the difference between idealism and realism.’

In the practice of writing inscape and the quest for creating inscape, literati use contemplation, meditation and spending time in gardens and amidst beautiful scenery. The attempt to ‘create inscape’ shows that they are unsatisfied with either the superficial depiction of natural landscape or the language game involved in its
representation. Instead they aspire to bridge the outer world and their inner world of ideals. They aspire to transcend their feelings of loss, or joy, with the natural scenery before them, and to transform what they see into a symbolic schema to express the world of perfection as seen in their own mind. This process of transforming the scenes of nature into something that represents perfection is an attempt to reach the convergence of self and nature, a poetic contemplation of nature coloured with a hue of oriental mysticism. In fact, this vision of contemplation is not unique to the East, as ancient Greek Platonic philosophy also describes similar concepts and practices, which later evolved into an understanding of a personal divine being. However, in traditional Chinese culture, the contemplative view of nature does not lead to seeing the divine as an object of rational thinking. Instead, it defines subjectively that internal peace and pleasure is the possibility for a ‘completion inscape’ and is based in the viewer’s mind. Traditional Chinese culture objectively treats everything in nature as a source of universal revelation. A good illustration of such a contemplative view of nature is the traditional landscape paintings that are familiar to us all. Small figures together with overwhelming mountains and water, represent a convergence of humanity and nature, illustrating an inscape of serenity and unfettered freedom and an aspiration for perfect harmony between humans and nature. This reflects the quest of ancient literati in relation to the status of life and psychology, in poetry and painting, a schema and philosophy that had scarcely undergone any significant change during the long history of relatively self-sufficient Chinese culture.

This approach has led to what is called, ‘addressing every change with no change’. Although this attempts a definition of personality and also a definition of universal revelation and even though it outlines the concept of ‘completion inscape’, it does not address the source of nature or the divine. This inability to address these foundational issues, sheds light on the events of history. During recent periods of transition and hardship and the movement of Chinese society and culture towards modernity, there has been a lack of inquiry into truth, the absence of a transcendental dimension. The commitment to ‘jingjie, sanctifying personality’ has become an alien concept in a world where materialism and satisfying personal desires are the priority. Therefore ‘addressing every change with no change’ appears unable to deal with the modern world where the inscape of life gradually gives way to a pragmatic pursuit of success.

The heaven and earth that is left in the wake of the industrial revolution is not the heaven and earth described in genesis, where ‘God saw every thing that he had made, and behold, it was very good’(3). What is more, the intrinsic mission of art has evolved from exploring the concept of completion in the classic age to simply raising the consciousness of the problem in the modern age, with no attempt at offering a solution. As a result, today’s cultural and natural environment and the sentiment felt by artists when they consider nature are tremendously different from the ancient tradition. Now, it is much more effective to simply illustrate the problems themselves, to do no more than represent contemporary culture and current sentiment and couple this with personal experience. This approach is much easier than grappling with and attempting to create the inscape of completion.

Therefore, we are now in a world of competing contrasts; completion versus contemporary problems, idealistic sentiment versus present anxiety, the inscape of life versus fleshy desire. All these strains remind us of the stark gap between the ideal and reality, between tradition and modernity. However, there are artists whose work is still concerned with the natural landscape and who are exploring deeper thinking. Maybe they will lead the call for a new type of ’supreme completion inscape’ in these current ‘lost circumstances’.

2. The Context and Transition of Agrestic Art

As described above, nature has been the traditional object and theme for artists to express their ‘circumstances of mind’. In the early 1980s, the Southwest Agrestic Art began to emerge and much critical and
academic study developed alongside. Both ‘Agrestic Art’ and ‘Life Flow’(4) and other later art movements, placed great importance on the influence of the geographic environment upon the spirit, style and schema of artists, believing that the nature of Southwest China and other social factors contributed to the emergence and thriving of ‘Agrestic Art’. However, with further urbanization and the advent of the age of globalization and the internet, ‘Agrestic Art’ and ‘Life Flow’ gradually withered and gave the way to the more representative style of ‘Chinese experience’. Despite losing widespread recognition and market opportunities, ‘Agrestic Art’ and ‘Life Flow’ nevertheless remain an enduring influence on many Yunnan artists, not least because of their close connection with local culture and the natural landscape.

In Yunnan where nature is rich and cultural traditions are diverse, many artists choose the expression of natural landscape as their principal form of art. Among them, there has been a unique phenomenon lasting for nearly half a century, which is characterized by the voluntary and persistent daily sketching of the landscape. This is illustrated by the enthusiasm for being integrated into and depicting nature by artists of the ‘Impressionist School’(5) and ‘Shen Society’(6) in the 1960s and 70s , also the ‘Life Flow’ movement in the 1980s and those artists today, old and young, who still go to the countryside to
sketch from nature. Such a phenomenon stems from and reinforces two traditions. First is the academic tradition of landscape sketching which is about formal aesthetic feeling and technical practice consistent with a modernistic art tradition and epistemology. Second is the traditional contemplative view of landscape sketching which seeks to capture the sentiment and feeling of the individual, the ‘expression of feeling through the sketching of scenery’. The ‘Impressionist School’s’ and ‘Shen Society’s’ concern about the natural environment and countryside of Yunnan was essentially the expression and extolling of the minority cultures, through depicting scenes of countryside life with close attention given to the colouration. The ‘Life Flow’ school was committed to eulogising the free will and uniqueness of life when the ideology of collectivism was fading away. Today’s artists, when faced with the countryside landscape, have to consider problems such as
the urbanization of the countryside and the modern pursuit of satisfying desires (fleshism). Consequently they turn to a different theme, one that considers the contemporary population’s mental circumstances. The Yunnan schools of art in the 1960s and 70s shaped their own art dialects, creating artistic forms and styles with provincial features, formed to some extent by their geographic environment. This led to widespread attention and a historical significance. However, as interesting as all this might be, is it enough to justify giving attention to a provincial cultural and art phenomena? At a time of accelerating urbanization, frequent migration
to the cities and increased dialogue between diverse cultures, will the universality and transcendence of these themes, which we are referring to, become even more important?

In response I would like would like to introduce the concept ‘Creating Inscape on The Spot’. This concept’s themes and symbolism originate from and yet transcend a provincial nature. It is activated by individual thinking but is projected towards the universal mentality of the human race. It is a call for change, to turn the external-internal inscape, whether complete or incomplete, into ‘Supreme Completion Inscape’.

At the foundational level, ‘Creating Inscape on The Spot’ is the technical ability to capture a scene from nature, at the highest level, it is a contemplative experience, a practice of artistic creation, an expression of the internal thoughts of an individual and the universal condition of humankind, all in the form of a landscape.

For this exhibition we choose the art works of 6 Yunnan artists, Lan Qingxing, He Libin, Guo Peng, Shi Zhimin, Sun Guojuan and Lei Yan, as well as a Guodong artist Mai Zhixiong, and Jonathan Kearney, a British artist with many years of life experience in China. They have been chosen as their work interprets this theme from various angles.

3. The Artists

The paintings of Lan Qingxing retain the feeling of agrestic paintings and internalise it into a ‘Transcendental Nostalgia’. In his oil painting ‘Landscape without People’, a wondering dog, a bizarre and thick withered tree, a distant chimney, together constitute a picture of sadness hinting at the strain between an agricultural setting and modern industrial development. In the long-frame sketch ‘Scheme’, there is a fragmented ‘home’ among weeds, bonfire, bed, dinner table, desk, coach, fridge, all scattering in the weeds. A man casually wonders
about, without doing any serious business, simply killing time, with his posture reflecting the frustration of getting lost near his own house, all by himself, yet the shabby building nearby is irrelevant to ‘home’. The figures and animals in Lan Qingxing’s paintings show a sign of concentration, as though they are constantly thinking of the way back home no matter whether they are climbing, running, carrying things, laboring or having a rest. Yet the red-earth land, small roads and grass under the starry night sky provides suggest opportunity but also seems to cause more frustration. Ever since Adam stole the forbidden fruit, the voice asking ‘where are you?’(7) is lingering in the innermost mind. We may be absolutely certain of our geographic
location, we may already be in our hometown, and yet we cannot get rid of a strange nostalgia, which originates not from a certain coordinate on the map, but from a calling in the depths of our spirit, a longing
for an ultimate homeland – a ‘Supreme Completion Inscape’ as dwellers on earth.

The expression of ‘Transcendental Nostalgia’ is also salient in the oil paintings of He Libin. The series ‘Wasteland’ endows the wilderness and the void, as well as the little lonely figures in the picture, with the
black and white expressionist style. Different from the contrast found in traditional Chinese landscapes, here the contrast between large scenery and small figures is not the serene ‘Completion Inscape’, but an inscape of sadness that highlights anxiety and void, in order to induce a cry for ‘Completion Inscape’. Here the smallness of the figure does not originate from the natural view of humility, but from the helpless view of life. The painter chooses wasteland and wilderness to highlight the dual loss of both body and soul of modern people. Physical and mental fatigue becomes evident against the void of wasteland and wilderness, while the aspiration to get rid of the void is exactly the vision needed by Kua Fu(8) when he was chasing after the sun.

Similiarly, Shi Zhimin from Dali also draws from the local nature in his homeland. The town of Dali, coupled with Cangshan Mountain and Erhai Lake, are richly endowed by nature and is itself a town of wonder. When I first
went to Dali this sense of wonder is exactly what I also felt. The natural characteristics are internalised by the artist giving a unique feeling to the series ‘Glacier’. A view of a glacier is characterized by seclusion, joy of life and super-realism. If nature has lost its ability to encourage inscape as a result of human’s crude plunder, the
fragment of a still mysterious glacier may well hit at the existence of another poetic schema.

The majority of Guo Peng’s photography draws on the views found in gardens around Kunming. The scenery in Green Lake park, the lake’s surface, rock-work and bamboo forests. As described above, the concept of
‘Creating Inscape on The Spot’ at the base level is a practical approach, manifested by the technical ability to capture a garden view. It is an attempt to obtain an artificial miniature of the elegant ‘completion inscape’ by mimicking the natural landscape with flower pots, pools and rock-work. Garden design is used to provide a place of mental recreation and spiritual rest for the literati and officialdom, from official career to inner world, from reality to ideal, from clamor to serenity. On the other hand, the close and extravagant nature of gardens made it possible for the declining literati to escape from the reality and live a corrupted way of life in the backyard of leisure. Today, in a society where over-entertainment is rampant in urban life, and the protection and succession of elite culture is absent, gardens have turned into the People Parks for the entertainment of the general public. Here the manufactured landscape remains as it was, but the inscape no longer exists. Guo Peng attempts to present a colorful myth of the garden through the manipulation of colour, to fabricate an
alienated backyard of literati, in an attempt to realise what Martin Heidegger called ‘the perch of poetry’.

Sun Guojuan’s ‘Sweetness Is Gone’ series is an interpretation of ‘Creating Inscape on The Spot’ by the use of brain teasers – mirroring on the spot. The artist, while holding a butterfly ornament in her hand, is lying tenderly in front of a mirror on the road side. The mirror is reflecting peach flowers in the park, with spring very much in the air. On the back of the artist is a pair of angle wings made of sugar, adding a playfulness and romance found in a child’s household game. Ornament, mirror and sugar wings reveal the stage property of Romantic Inscape. Sugar has been used as a metaphorical language in Sun Guojuan’s art works for years, symbolizing on the one hand women as the object of tasting in a male dominant society, and on the other, women’s attempt to retain their youth for ever by turning their bodes into sugar. Fictitious and fragile, the image of spring in the mirror and sweet fleshy body speak of the bankruptcy of women’s desire to retain
youth forever. While the sweet feeling of the body is the only dignity and comfort alive, the sweet feeling of heart has been devoured by consumerism, the loss and fragmentation of humans cannot be saved by simple stage props. In No. 5 and No. 6 of ‘Sweetness Is Gone’, the dagger in the artist’s hand clearly indicates the anxiety and fear after the fragmentation of body and heart when ’sweetness is gone’.

Lei Yan’s photography continues the methodology of her ‘Freezing’ series. Elements raging from photographs of comrades in the army, to revolutionary articles, to images of the trenches are all put in ice cubes and photographed again, generating an archaeological memory of the image, while a woman’s career in the army is recalled in such a sad yet private way. In her work about her military career, Lei Yan reduces soldiers to men and women, the machinery of state to a school of childish faces, monument of hero to one tombstone after another, sacrifice to price, collectivism to mutual help and revolutionary romance to sentiments in the sealed history. The significance and nobility manifested by life itself are much more significant than any transient state in the long river of history, since life has soul and soul is immortal.

Mai Zhixiong’s ‘Sanctuary?’ series retains his simple style of object, scenery and colour and refined abstraction. However the artist has undergone a shift from his previous work and has rejected any possibility of symbolic construction. The scene in the picture in brightened, Beacon Mountain appears but the title is questioning
sanctuary, showing the artist’s rethinking of symbolism. A sanctuary is considered a holy place in Judaism and Christianity, the innermost chamber of the Jewish temple was called the ‘Holy of Holies’, regarded as the dwelling place of the LORD God. Only the high priest could enter the ‘Holy of Holies’ once each year on the ‘Day of Atonement’. However, such a place built by human hands appears too small in front of the all-mighty God, hampering the relationship between humans and God. The curtain that blocked the ‘Holy of Holies’ from human access was ripped apart when Jesus died on the cross. Christianity holds that it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats to take away human sin, however, as is noted in the book of Hebrews in the New Testament, ‘we have confidence to enter into the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus’. The quest for the sanctuary, however, is not for the beacon, nor for the holy mountain beyond, but as Jesus told the woman of
Samaria, ‘a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem… God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth’.(9)

Whereas the 7 Chinese artists discussed above raise questions in their art as a cry for a ‘Completion Inscape’ or even ‘Supreme Completion Inscape’, the video work of British artist Jonathan Kearney, by focusing on the
process of colours following across time, creates an image of ‘Completion Inscape’ in micro scale across a timeframe. If the other artists in this exhibition mainly draw their images from the location in which they are living, Jonathan treats the micro objects in his art as a kind of ‘local experience’. It is worth mentioning that Jonathan has also exhibited his art works via off-site live broadcast over the internet, a remarkable departure from the dependence on, and significance of, location when ‘Creating Inscape on The Spot’. The advent of a digital, internet era makes concepts such as ‘on the spot’ and ‘location’ seem insignificant, maybe even redundant. The important thing is the presentation of ‘inscape’ itself.

4. Conclusion

To a great extent the art discussed in this essay provide justification for considering the landscape around us and comfort for our minds and inner self. They also challenge us with profound insights into culture and life.

Provincial, cultural and natural resources should not become the prerequisite for an art movement or artist to receive historical recognition. The reason why a geographic characteristic or ethnic culture is widely recognized is because it carries a fundamental reflection of self and maybe something universal for all humans. The concept of ‘Creating Inscape on The Spot’ and this exhibition are simply designed to introduce such a possibility. Just as the Southwest school of ‘Life Flow’ inevitably turned into the ‘Chinese experience’ movement, ‘Chinese experience’ will itself return to life.

Notes:

(1) Jingjie: the degree or limit of boundary, country, or the accomplishment of people or artworks in spirit, culture or morality.

(2) Inscape: noun, poetic/literary, the unique inner nature of a person or object as shown in a work of art, esp. a poem. ORIGIN mid 19th cent. (originally in the poetic theory of Gerard Manley Hopkins). Know more about this word on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inscape

(3) According to Genesis, 1:31, On the the sixth day of Genesis, ‘And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good’.

(4) ‘Life Flow’ is a school of painting evolved from agrestic painting by some Southwest artists, originating from the expressionist style of life flow paintings by artists such as Ye Yongqing, Zhang Xiaogang, Zhou Chunya, Mao Xuhui and Pan Dehai. The artists choose the expression of their own life experience, internal journey and sentiment as the purpose of their artwork. This approach has gradually become a cultural tradition for contemporary Southwest art.

(5) Kunming Impressionist School: a school of artists, active in the streets and suburbs of Kunming and keen on the daily sketching of landscape in 1960s and 70s, formed a unique style of Yunnan oil painting characterized by gorgeous colours and strong expressive force. Its representatives include Pei Wenkun, Pei Wenlu, Jiang Gaoyi, Sha Lin and Su Xinhong.

(6) Shen Society: an art society formed in 1970s by artists such as Ding Shaoguang, Jiang Tiefeng, Liu Shaohui and Yao Zhonghua who were born in the 1940s. In 1980, Shen Society as a group held a exhibition
in Yunnan Museum, with their primitive decoration style starkly different from the revolutionary realistic style popular across the country. Later, Ding Shaoguang and Jiang Tiefeng emigrated to the U.S. and formed the ‘School of Contemporary Yunnan Heavy Colored Painting’, which has wide influence internationally.

(7) According to Genesis, 2:15 – 3:10, Adam and Eve, lured by the serpent, ate the forbidden fruit and hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden, ‘And the LORD God called
unto Adam, and said unto him, Where are you?’

(8) ‘Hai Wai Bei Jing’ in Shan Hai Jing recorded a tale that a man named Kua Fu exerted his utmost strength to chase after the sun but eventually died of thirsty and became a grove of peach trees. Based on this tale, He Libing drew an oil painting titled ‘Chasing the Sun’.

(9) Quoted from John, 4:21-24.

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Thirty Years of Landscaping

Luo Fei 发表于 2009/03/21 — 评论


Thirty Years of Landscaping
The roadmap of landscape in contemporary Yunnan art
written by He Libin

The year of 1979, was an important one for many Chinese. With the
People’s Republic of China witnessing its first year of opening-up and
its 30th anniversary, the government’s cultural and art policies began
to loosen up. This year, artists working in Kunming, Yunnan, such as
Ding Shaoguang, Jiang Tiefeng, Yao Zhonghua, Wang Jinyuan, Liu Shaohui
and Wang Ruizhang formed an artist group named “Shen Society.” They
chose the name “Shen Society” for several reasons: first, 1979 was the
Year of Monkey in Chinese Lunar Calendar, and one meaning of “Shen” in
Chinese language was “monkey;” second, the Monkey King was a popular
figure among Chinese; and third, they wanted to express the desire to
pursue freedom and truth and uplift social justice, as “Shen” can also
mean “uplift.” This group of artists often got together to discuss art,
and chose to learn the idea and style from Cubism and Fauvism in modern
Western art and to pursue the language of formal beauty in art. In
1980, Shen Society organized an exhibition
of 120 artworks from 23 artists in the Museum of Yunnan Province. In
the following two years, they organized some artists to hold
exhibitions in Beijing and Hong Kong. Their paintings in the main have
a tendency of flat painting and decoration deformation, characterized
by gorgeous colors, and, through the portrait of the life of minorities
in Yunnan, exhibits an aesthetic style featuring intertwined illusion
and emotion, exoticism and imagination. The new style, just like a
fresh breeze in China’s painting community, at that time still imbued
with the style of revolutionary realism in the Cultural Revolution,
together with the contention about the style and subject of the fresco1
in Capital Airport, triggered a massive debate about formal beauty
across the country, the first nationwide sensation started by Yunnan
art. At that time, some younger Yunnan artists were still in college,
such as Mao Xuhui in Yunnan College of Art, Zhang Xiaogang and Ye
Yongqing in Sichuan College of Art, and Mao Dehai in Northeast Normal
University, who asked his university to assign him to a job in Kunming
after graduation. These young people, active in thinking, got together
naturally, maintained correspondence with each other at college, and
went together in Kunming during vacation to watch exhibition, go out
for living sketch or discuss art all day and or night. Similarly, they
also drew nutrition from Western modernism. But unlike the artists of
Shen Society, they accepted the cultural heritages such as
expressionism, surrealism, symbolism and existential philosophy.
Undergoing the adolescent frustration and rash, they found the Western
modernistic ideas and philosophies, particularly those after the
impressionism, somehow consistent with their mentality. At that time,
artists such as Zhang Ding, Wu Guanzhong and Yuan Yunsheng frequently
went to Yunan to sketch, hold exhibition or give lecture. Young artists
like Mao Xuhui were also influenced by the concept of “formal beauty2″
raised by these artists. But when they saw the exhibition of German
expressionism in the summer of 1982 in Beijing, they were tremendously
excited and shocked, realizing that it was expressionism that was the
right approach to express their feeling and mentality. Another trace
was their experience of traveling to Guishan Mountain several times for
live sketch. In 1979, Mao Xuhui, Zhang Xiaogang, Ye Yongqing and Yang
Yijiang, still college students, went to Guishan Mountain to sketch.
Guishan, which they long yearned for, was a village of minority Sani
people located about 100 kilometers away from Kunming, a pastoral place
very much resembling the scene in the paintings of 19th century French
Barbizon School artist Jean Francois Millet. Before them, many senior
artists also went there and portray Guishan with the Soviet realistic
approach and expressionist language of light. Mao Xuhui and his
colleagues also used similar language in their expression, but they
always had a feeling that those splendid portraits somehow fell short
of their feelings. In the following several years, they went to Guishan
several times and gradually found the language that suited their
feelings. Mao Xuhui’s “Mother of Laterate: Guishan Series” accentuated
the tremendous energy concealed in the red soil, and the people, the
trees and herds growing from the red soil are gushing, flushing and
erupting, with burning primitiveness and lust everywhere. Zhang
Xiaogang’s “Behind Mountain” and “Evening Breeze” exhibit the blunt and
rough touches like Van Gauge, portraying the primitiveness and hardship
of life in a mountainous village. Ye Yongqing drew upon the composition
principles of Western classic fresco in his “Sani Sisters in Shepherd
Village,” “Sheep Killed by Wolf in Front of Village,” “Blind Girl Going
Home” and “Startled Bird” etc, and sketched a series of pastoral lyric
pictures by setting some narrative details and scenes. It was the
landscape of Guishan that shed some light onto and awakened their mind
long sealed in urban life, and presented a stark contrast with their
status and mentality in the city. Back in city, Mao Xuhui finished his
artworks like “Red Volume” and “Private Space,” depicting a moving
volume struggling to shake off the outside shackles and pursuing the
true self when running, reflecting the fact that the confrontation
against social ideology is evolving to resistance to everything outside
self. Life and dream, reality and illusion, intertwined in his chaotic
think, are scarcely distinct from each other. In June 1985, Mao Xuhui,
Zhang Xiaogang, Pan Dehai and Zhang Long brought their artworks with
them and held an exhibition named “Neo-figurative” in the Art Gallery
of Jing’an District, Shanghai. What is “neo-figurative”? Mao Xuhui
explained in the introduction of the exhibition: “…the concept of
‘neo-figurative’ is devised in an attempt to transfer art away from a
vulgar sociological tool and the whole set of false models and social
interests that are resulted and to art itself, and to free artists from
the position of dependent and slave and restore them to the height of
noumenon of man.” Thereafter, the neo-figurative school held several
exhibitions in Nanjing, Kunming, Chongqing and the U.S., and later
launched activities like “Southwest Art Study Group,” until the full
stop when the majority of the members of “neo-figurative” participated
in “China Modern Art Exhibition” in 1989.

After 1990s, the artists returned to the status of everyday life,
when Mao Xuhui painted “Everyday Epic” series and “Patriarch Series:
Vocabulary about Power,” Zhang Xiaogang began to work on “Big Family”
which later attracted wide attention, and Ye Yongqing was drawing “Big
Poster.” In addition, a school of even younger artists began their
journey with a range of exhibition activities: “1992 Painting
Exhibition,” “Present Status,” “Individualism,” “Types of Life,” “Urban
Personality,” “First Exhibition of Oil Painting Society” etc. Landscape
was presented in their artworks with characteristics different the
“neo-figurative” school in two ways: first, the anxious sentiment was
manifested, and man appears confrontational with landscape; second, the
identity of self was blurred, lost, and drifting in weightlessness. In
1992, Zhu Fadong carried out his action of “Notice Seeking Lost Person”
in Kunming by looking himself by posting notices seeking himself all
over the city in order to express his generation’s feeling of the loss
and seeking of self identity in early 1990s. Zeng Xiaofeng’s “Electric
Saw and Landscape” juxtaposes electric saw, a symbol of modern
industry, and landscape in the same picture, in which the savage
electric saw is ripping and devouring ancient architecture and natural
landscape, thereby exhibiting fierce clashes between industrial and
natural landscapes. Luan Xiaojie in his “Trunk and Branch Series”
treats human and tree as a whole body, producing a Delvaux-style
grotesquery and surrealistic scene. The objects in the picture,
resembling both amputated limbs and muscles, stack in the ambiguous
space, glittering with queer shine, while the shallow trunks and
branches appear illusive and fragile. Wu Jun’s “Dusk Shadow in Wind”
portrays blurred human figure floating above a dilapidated city, with
the picture pervaded by endless anxiety. Duan Yuhai’s “Beauty and
Limousine” puts a pretty woman, limousine and cosmetics in the same
picture, presenting the new orientations and changes in the Chinese
society after the 1990s. Li Ji’s “Fashion Girl” also employs the
language of gaudiness and juxtaposition by putting a woman with heavy
makeup and her pet in a single picture, erotic yet exotic, just like
Yamato-e in modern time. In their artworks, everything from the
confrontation between humans and their surroundings to drifting in
weightlessness is illustrating a kind of potential anxiety and anguish,
collectively reflecting the chaos of value, loss of individual identity
and the spiritual journey to regain it, juxtaposed by China’s faster
process of market reform and urbanization as well as aggravated
destruction of natural environment after the 1990s. Their artworks were
a reflection of that generation of artists’ collective experience of
urban life, and directly heralded the look of the artworks of artists
born in the 1970s and 1980s.

After 2000, consumerism and fashion have become the mainstream value
in urban life, and the modern popular culture, involving film,
magazine, web, cartoon, pervasive advertisements, has constitutes the
daily environment for urban dwellers. Artists grown up in such an
environment are clearly split in aesthetic approaches: some inherit the
scene of anxiety from the previous generation of artists, reflected in
their artworks by the tendencies of self-ostracism and
anti-metropolitan; others uphold and practice the aesthetics of
transient coolness, clamor and popularity, in order to acquire new
inspirations and art resources by plunging themselves into the scene of
metropolitan consumerist culture. Whether they are anti-metropolitan or
putting themselves in metropolitan, landscape exhibits a tendency of
virtualization and patching up. Since 2003, several important art
events heralded the début of post-1970s and 1980s artists. Exhibitions
such as “Health Checkup,” “Sheep Is Coming,” “Altitude Sickness,”
“Ultraviolet Radiation,” “Entertainment Is Paramount” etc. on the one
hand highlighted the young artists’ sensitivity to and concern about
the relationship between their growth and changes of their
surroundings, and on the other hand reflected the divergence of the
above-mentioned aesthetic perspectives. In 2003, He Jia began to draw
his “Balloon Man” series, which portrays a range of human-like figures
without clear identity or complexion, with shining colors all over,
drifting or walking in the city or amidst natural sceneries which are
thin and transparent, beautiful but illusive just like these balloon
men. Zhang Jinxi’s “Glass Man” series exerts the beauty of transparency
to the utmost, whereby the body of the glass man reflects the
surrounding landscape, which together with the man presents a sense of
illusive yet transient vanity. Guo Peng recorded the landscape in
Kunming Park with his camera and endowed strong colors to these
traditional garden views with manual rendering. Nevertheless, these
pictures look in every way like frames of exotic images imbued with a
smell of decadence and mustiness. Yu Hua creates an image of a rabbit
mingled with man, placing themselves in a metropolitan like a fairy
tale, consciously getting lost in the urban labyrinth. Contrary to
these artists, some others followed the tradition of expressionism and
deliver a primitive and remote flavor with conflicting and turbulent
pictures and heavy yet provocative colors. In Zhao Leiming’s paintings,
men are always placed in closed space, where even natural landscape
appears suffocating, and distorted human body locked in the space is
like imprisoned beast struggling. Lan Qingxing’s “Crazy Talk,” “Wind
Talk” and “Wind and Rain” portray weeds, starry sky, red trees and red
human body to express the desire of man to leave the clamorous urban
and return to simple nature. However, would therefore going back to the
past be meaningful? He did not give an answer. Shi Zhimin went further
with his “Glacial Epoch,” where there is no civilization, no urban, nor
the natural landscape today, but the extinction of everything, cold and
silent.

As a cross section, the artworks of the above-mentioned artists
represent the true situation of post-1970s and 80s artists. Overall,
they are more diversified, and values individual difference and
experience more, and their artworks also exhibit diversity and new
aesthetic tendencies. But this group of artists also generally
manifests a tendency of vanity. Whether they are committed to this
country or ostracize themselves to somewhere far away, would such
approaches actually solve the conflicts and dilemmas in the real world,
and deliver an everlasting value to lend the artists experience and
enlightenment? Answers to these questions are expected only after
necessary observations.

Time keeps on changing, and each generation has their own dilemmas
and problems to face and solve, and to confront with the perpetual
beings in nature; what the Yunnan artists in the 1940s saw were
beautiful landscape and Eden-like minority culture, in which they were
enchanted; what the artists in the 1950s saw were the perching images
in their inner feeling, where they found their mother of spirituality;
artists of the 1960s held themselves slightly aloof when faced with the
nature; the disruptive situation of the artists of the 1970s had them
see nothing but a realm of vanity whether they placed themselves in
urban or returned to nature, whereas artists in the 1980s were lost and
enchanted in the landscape of alienation….Facing the eternal nature,
what insight do the artists arrive at? Could they acquire from the
nature a fundamental wisdom that cuts across everything in the
universe, so as to provide mankind today and tomorrow with an enriching
and meaningful way of migration in this world? This should be the
shared mission and direction for several generations of Yunnan artists.

March 9, 2009 at Yun Yi Xuan, Kunming

Notes:

1. Capital Airport fresco: On September 29, 1979, then China’s
largest modernized airport – Capital International Airport, was
completed, when 7 giant frescoes in its lounge were also unveiled to
the public. Among them was a 27 meters long and 3.4 meters long fresco
titled “Water-splashing Festival – Paean of Life” drawn by Yuan
Yunsheng, portraying the scene of Dai people (a minority ethnic group
living in Southwest China, particularly Yunnan) celebrating their
Water-splashing Festival. The fresco consists of two parts: on the
front side of the wall was scene of Dai people carrying water,
splashing water and dancing; on a smaller wall to the east were scenes
of bathing and courting. Because of nudity in this bathing part, the
fresco was covered with a curtain several months after it was unveiled
for show. On the eve of China’s National Day on October 1, a grand
ceremony of completion was held for Capital International Airport, one
of the key national construction projects shortly after the Cultural
Revolution. The frescos in the lounge unveiled at the same time became
a sensational event for China’s art community that year. Among all
these frescos, “Water-splashing Festival” was the largest one, and the
first artwork appearing in public space with nude human body ever since
the People’s Republic of China was found in 1949, triggering widespread
debate in media at that time.

2. Formal beauty: In 1981, artist Wu Guanzhong published an article
titled “Content Determines Form?” in the 3rd issue of the journal Art
that year, for the first time raising the question of “formal beauty”
in art. Wu argued that in artworks, the form could came to existence
before the content, a proposition that retorting the principle of
“content determines form” in art in the Cultural Revolution and
triggering a nationwide debate about content and form.

Tagged , ,

Extending the Love

Luo Fei 发表于 2008/10/18 — 评论

Even if the report of the pandemic of AIDS in China and the
world is just one line of news, the occurrence of AIDS, from the people
involved in sexual business, drug users and homosexual people to common
people, from red-light district, drug dealers, gay bars to common
families, it seems like a hopeless curse. Accompanied with AIDS is the
discrimination to infected people, the ignorance, lack of trust and
love towards the infected people. This discrimination itself does more
than just humiliate people, but also makes the infected people feel
filthy and without hope.

Yunnan is the province where AIDS is most severe in China, so the
AIDS care people and culture workers have to face this fact. With this
background and the burden to AIDS infected people, along with the TCG
Nordica vision that we’ve had for many years (Stimulating reflection on
human worth as expressed in various Art Forms), we decided to try to do
something for this. We know that art, literature and music, by their
special ways of communication, are considered as special international
languages. People communicate at all levels by these arts, and they are
also a way to meaningfully and deeply communicate to people’s hearts.
Through this, the artists and audiences can have more free
communication, followed by all kinds of understanding and resonance.

From the year of 2006, we started the 3-year program: “Contagious Love: Artistic reflection on HIV/Aids situation in China”.
Our purpose is to strengthen people’s care about AIDS and to build a
bridge between the artists, poets, AIDS care people and the AIDS
infected people, so they could know and understand each other better.
Three years passed so fast. We have worked with related organizations
to have special topic lectures and seminars. We have visited the
infected people & drug users, we had related exhibitions,
performances etc..
In 2006, the first year of this program “Contagious
Love”, many artists in Yunnan responded to our program. 38 of them were
involved in painting, photography, decorating, video etc. to produce
art works which were focused on AIDS. The second year, we had more than
10 writers, poets and artists involved in art work and exhibitions. In
the third year was a pageant of music. We invited highest level
musicians from North Europe. Through the sound of nature, they cared
for the sick people in their sufferings and brokenness. The activities
following this program still continue. We get the overwhelming support
from the artists, poets and musicians of different countries: Cambodia,
France, Switzerland, Belgium, Sweden, Norway, and Finland.

This year is the curtain call of program “Contagious Love”, we are
happy for the experiences we have had from this program. The gain is
not how many exhibitions or performances we had, but the fact that
through art, by communication and understanding, we change our apathy
and ignorance. We are also touched by the artists who have been working
hard to let people to close the cage of discrimination and to open the
door of love.

Finally, we really want to say thanks. Thanks to the artists, to the
related organizations, also thanks to the firm and persistent infected
people who are full of hope and who have given the artists inspiration
and encouragement. Through the sincere fellowship and mutual support
for the infected people and drug users who were trying to abstain from
the drugs, we realize the higher lever of human being’s value: love
each other and let the love be extended.

Luo Fei /Artist, TCG Nordica Gallery Director & Curator
October 11th, 2008.
Kunming


Luo Fei’s digital photograph “Cure me”

Also posted in 艺术档案, 艺术评论 | Tagged ,

“不安的肉身”：关于张兴旺和严仁奎的作品

Luo Fei 发表于 2008/08/31 — 评论


张兴旺作品

不安的肉身

文：罗菲

张兴旺的绘画是关于一只只或膨胀或干瘪的气球，近乎肉身的气球质感被无可名状的情欲附体，或者，隐秘于肉身内莫名的冲动、欲念竟被一只只气球揭穿，一种惶惶不安的冲动正不可遏制地燃烧着、流露着。这或许就是艺术家关注气球并以此作为艺术符号的动机和理由，这也是艺术家给当代人留下的一个比喻。

严仁奎的绘画是关于封闭空间里的人体，或飞腾或挣扎或呐喊或娱乐或无所事事，那些人体大多肌肉健硕紧绷，体势夸张，具有很强的戏剧性效果，对肉身质感的刻画显出艺术家长期接受写实主义以与唯美主义的熏陶，而画中墙上的面孔、壶里飘出的青烟则暗示着一股超现实般的干预力量。作为富有激情和梦想的人在一个封闭空间里如何自处，或如何逃离，正是艺术家内心深处所深刻体会到的尖锐矛盾。

这两位艺术家对画面中的笔法、用色、造型、画的质感等处理都有章有法，显出学院派的写实功夫和审美趣味。虽然两位艺术家的作品在面貌和主题上看上去并不相关，但在精神诉求上，却都关注于作为个体的人身，如何在当下纷繁复杂充满诱惑却又虚无缥缈的世界中安身而立命。艺术家所提出的问题，往往也是许多人深刻体会到的挣扎，而他们的作品，则像我们内心的一面镜子。


严仁奎作品

Zhang Xingwang & Yan Renkui’s exhibition:
“Restless Flesh”

The paintings of Zhang Xingwang are about inflated or shriveled balloons. Those flesh-feeling balloons are attached by untold desires; or the impulses and desires hidden in flesh are debunked by balloons, and uneasy and anxious desires are uncontrollably burning and outpouring. This perhaps is the motivation and reason for the artist to concern about balloons, which are made to be symbols of art, and a metaphor left by artist for this generation of people.

The paintings of Yan Renkui are about human bodies in closed spaces, flying or struggling, screaming or entertaining, or doing nothing. Most of those human bodies are with strong and tense muscles, exaggerated gestures and rather dramatic effect. The depictions of those human bodies show that the artist has been trained under realism and estheticism since long ago. In those paintings, there are faces on the wall and light smoke coming out of pot, which is a hint of super-reality intervening power. As an enthusiastic man with dreams, how can he get along with himself in such a closed space? Or how can he escape? These are the sharp conflicts deeply felt by the artist at the bottom of his heart.

Two artists have their own rules and principles in handling their brushwork, color, form and tactile impression of paintings, which shows both of their solid realism foundation and aesthetic taste of academism. Though the paintings of those two artists look irrelevant, their spiritual appeals are about human bodies, as individuals. How can people survive and develop in such a complicated, alluring but illusory world? This is the question raised by artists, and also the struggle felt by plenty of people. Their artworks are just like a mirror, standing in our heart.

written by Luo Fei

展览信息：
开幕时间:2008年9月6日晚上8点
展期：2008.9.6—9.29
艺术主持:罗菲
TCG诺地卡画廊，昆明市西坝路101号，云南白药厂旁

Also posted in 艺术档案, 艺术评论 | Tagged , ,

The Fantastic World of the Kaleidoscope

Luo Fei 发表于 2008/06/14 — 评论

During his time at Yunnan Academy of Art (2001-2006), Guo Peng worked hard but ignored his proper duties at school, just like me. He majored in sculpture, but engaged in contemporary art with a group of feverish young experimental artists without looking back. From live art to installation art to performance art, Guo Peng explored different art forms, and gradually found his own way of creating photography-based work. He independently accumulated a lot of experience making art when he was still in school, a rare thing among those Yunnan art students.

His first foray into photography involved a kind of performance – recording couples’ happy moments with one-inch photos, developing those photos in his humble darkroom which was once his kitchen, coloring them with tea, trimming fancy borders, then drying them. When the photos were done, he sent them back to those couples. It was warm and sincere. Maybe in the process of coloring photos with tea, he recalled a childhood memory: our parent’s generation used to color their black and white photos, the impressive scarlet lips and expressed the romantic family sensibility of the 1960’s and 1970s, yearning for a colorful world in times of scantiness. After the popularization of the color photo, hand coloration was of course abandoned. And now people modify their digital images with Photoshop. Hand-colored photography is vanishing, but is re-used by Guo Peng, a post 80’s artist.

From 2003 to 2005, Guo Peng used this out of date method to work on different contemporary subject matters. He re-took pictures of cover girls, garden landscapes, city squares, ruins, puppets, Pecking Opera on the TV screen, and other images he happened upon, hand-coloring them, creating a nostalgic and wistful feeling. These pocket-size photos were kept in an old photo album, becoming the memory of the family. Such work seemed the result of indulging oneself in private images. Since 2005,in order to get rid of this nostalgic style, he started developing A4 size silver salt black and white photos, the biggest size one could develop at home. Here he focused on water, reflected images, lotuses, rockeries and trees, totally fascinated with certain delicate qualities of light. He gradually formed his own method and style evoking the literati’s ideal landscape through hand-colored black and white photos.

The diffuse and mottled colors in the dreamlike scenes of this series of works attract and confuse us at the same time: we can hardly tell it is true or fake. Guo Peng explored different possibilities within a limited space. For example, he borrowed the idea of coloring old pictures to awaken and decorate the black and white world; coloring a photo according to its original lines to create the feeling of modern design; or dividing the picture into wave-like color domains. These photographs give a sensation of a dizzying dreamland, just like the fantastic world of the kaleidoscope, like a huge projector casting gorgeous colors from the overarching sky.

Guo Peng is a quiet and thoughtful person. He enjoys his domestic life, has very healthy habits, and spends a lot of time meditating, reading and writing. He’s not slaving for anyone – I really envy such life condition. Recently, he’s been thinking about why Chinese literati sapped their spirit by playing crickets.

Suddenly I realized there are quite a few young Kunming artists who are living independent lives. They haven’t given up their dreams, they haven’t gotten caught up in the market, and they just cultivate their art with plain living and a peaceful mood. Guo Peng is a special one among them.

Written by Luo Fei
2008.4.10
Translator :Zhou qiao

Also posted in 艺术评论 | Tagged , ,
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