THE DEPARTED — Works by the Young Artists from Luxun Academy of Fine Art in Shanghai

Duration : 10:00 -- 18:00

Opening : Mar 2,2008 (Sun) -- Apr 20,2008 (Sun)

Venue : Hall 103/208/203, Building 3, No.50, Moganshan Road, Shanghai 200060, China

Tel : 021-52527198/021-62765736

Web : https://shunartdesign.com/

Artist :

REVIEW

Prologue the Reality under the Surface
What makes a good story spread out is measured by if listeners are touched, but not because it’s objective or true. Like legend story been broadcasted but never been suspected, nothing can prohibit the story from meeting some one from some age, finishing its journey of vivid life and descending to followed generations. Do you feel the art of painting today is just like the legend story, old but never can be stopped?
In our time, Art appears in countless ways, and painting as one of them has been extruded like a piece of paper, thin as the wing of cicada. Would we really lose this “piece of paper” today, which used to ship all mankind’s dreams and not yet terminated?
“No.”
Painting has its own meaning. It never means a simple block of color or a shape on canvas, nor sheer deceptions, nor careless or mindless painting. People always feel themselves are in the paintings and exiled into freedom if the paintings are real good. It is the true essence of painting, that the more actively or specifically the painting appears, the longer we feel ourselves travel in time and distance, the more real the feeling and experience are. Painting exists like a dream, the secret lies in why do we paint and how do we enjoy it, which inspired restless painters exploring and practicing days after days.
Mr. Potato’s Scar led us to the experience in which a life carrier corrupts step by step. Potatoes seem strengthened energies while exploding in air, but the corruption ending has destined since the moment they departing from the earth. Artists wrapped its wounds by Bandy, and surround it with bullets. However, where are the wounds or bullets coming from? It also give them an injection and transfusion in return. Laid out the vague action to help them to release their own desire…….The Mr. Potato have been interpreting the each play that was counted by the invisible clcok what time it will be over. The artist interpreted us his comprehension of truth through his Mr. Potato. His grief and calmness have been poured out on the canvas through his pen. The object he faithfully portrayed came up some bizarre performance in the real life,the real life that we has long been customary to neglect unexpectedly. It always is the kind of painting that can wake us up by knocking our nerves.
Zhang Tuo led us into a deserted world. He distinguished the ambiguous profile of the world. Originally, the environment and Mankind harmony co-existed and depended on each other, express our emotion with pleasing, just like the fish and water. But it is trees in the work, ugly as bogie, stretched out everywhere into the space and invaded the sky and earth, which forced me to repress my emotions. He described such different two feelings through living this time by the same painting skill.Fashion lives are busy, and our society develops so fast that no one in history can compare with. People tear around for competition, look around the security for understanding and peace.Zhang Tuo growed up in the day and age, whereas never blind by it. No matter what the outside world is changing, all that we mankind need is an inner world that could brings us peace and rest. Driven by it, he made us wear a piece of cyan filter paper with the special intention, with eyes covered, and entered into his world.
Qu Yan expressed this kind of painting a step deeper and further. A great amount of trains and railways in his work. It was said that his father was a train driver.He spent his girlhood in mining site of northeast of China.He has got a bold and rough temperament from there helped him to feel art by the typical way. Wherever he goes or whatever he paints,his pure colors will be caught by the first sight. Southland, holy mountain, railway and civic landscape……all of them have been interpreted as his zest for life on his convas with the smooth stroke and deep color.
Zhu Xinyu personalized his own mood and feeling by his painting. He only picked up one corner with a man, a window and a room without any character. You might not have eye contact with them, as they all were buried in a thoughtful mood. They blinded the eyes with their own hands. Look down, saw that huge gate has been opened up wide,sunlight and wind filtered through the window. The bright red of the curtains were unable to blott out the view of the deep sky. We have figured out what a prince among men from the former point of view. He used the most modest way and the simplest elements to describe the purest his emotion without narrating and decorating. However there implied a conflicting emotion that hard to say in his unpretentious paintings. It made people nervous when high-colored contrast struck deep into the minds of the people.
In Guo Chao’s painting, white colors come block by block, with crouching and hidden dark lines traveling among colored layers. Picturing a lovely smart girl is painting on a cloth of pure white silk, the distinct mountains, water, courtyards, waved roads, and so on. She guarded her pure heart so carefully, never willing to turn back and entering the sophisticated world. She’s trying to clean up the apartness and helplessness in the sapiens heart by the divine presence and blessing from doves. She is going to help us to completely forget the sadness.
Zhao Liang expressed his worries and paradox in his work through a girl who is too thin to alive. Millions of lilies standing in the sky, heading to the earth, they look near but never can be reached. What can we do? Hugging? Hiding? Or waiting? Or surrendering and chasing? No answer.
Painting human bodies or still object is one kind of the best-known form.It was open in the women of Zhang Wuyun, on the other hand implicit in the men of Lin Pengfei. The gourd of Fu Jingyan although still object seemed to have had the heart’s-blood, revealed the signs of life by standing and leaning like a man. The artists described the special feeling about life at their own angle.
What He Jinyang drew was her hometown. There were red flags, the square, the heroes monument and the alley engraved on his memory. She described her hometown with the dark colors. Didn’t want to change or destroy the people’s impression about the city which one was in the public eye, but just told us the personal feeling.Maybe no one else would understand this feeling.She still desired to tell us to make a point of the conflicting relationship between individual and living environment. You might find the living environment much more than the individual in her painting. It agreed without prior consultation that the individual has been vanished under the large, complicated living environment.
Picking the traditional Medium of painting to express their own feels, the ten craftsmen made it especially precious when Media of Latter Modernism is booming. Time shaped them. Honestly and passionately, they elaborated and dedicated their feels about the status of modem lives. Their worries, thoughts and confusions reflected ours’, and their blues and bitter experiences are the heritages from this modern world. How would you feel when we read these long suspended questions while watching the paintings?
The Art of Painting is a simple carrier, born with puzzles, but never can be figured out. To paint as free as the life goes, this can only be the nature of painters—reflecting our Times through painting, and communicating to the soul through painting. It is painting that penetrate under the surface of our lives, and in return, it is our lives that deeply reflected by paintings. How happy it would be if we let our minds fly freely between paintings and lives.
May us fellow generation carries on together!

Hejinyang

Magical works
The works group-exhibited this time are collected from Beijing and Shenyang when I had business trip there. Art studios in Beijing located quite far from downtown, I was so exited finally I could find a Taxi. Shenyang artists live in top floors (can’t remember sixth or eighth) of a building without an elevator that you can easily imagine how hard the visit could be. Under the temperature of underneath 20 degree, I felt almost out of my breath, freezing and tiring. But it was a worthy pay when I met with their works. The feels is just like what you will feel when you blind-dated with some, a bit nervous, a bit strange, but a bit familiar. Well, never blind-dated before, just by imagining.
The potatoes in Gonghe’s Mr. Potato Series, beautiful as a mysterious flower from the surface, but actually were budded or even corrupted, which metaphored the untreatable pain of modern generation. Gong also uncovered the profound paradox when one felt hurt by love, he could not help himself out but still unwilling to get comfort by asking help from others.
Fu Jungyan’s gourd series described a story of lovers’ backs. The backs look sometime happy, sometime funny, but sometime hard to tell. The lovers’ backs depend on each others, but sometimes get hurt if the position is wrong, and why, there is a back of third person?
Lin Pengfei and Zhu Xinyu, widely used the color of blue in their works. Zhu’s blue represents the feel of melancholy or lonely–strong, active but irresistible–which can not treated by dark red blocks that symmetrically arranged in the painting. Who is closed eyes and enjoy lonely? Lin used blue as background color, and posed a contrast while one is wearing or naked. He seems to exclaim that it won’t be bad for the man if he is alone.
The female body came straight in Zhang Wuyun’s canvas. You can find all poses of men and women and butterflies in his works. Are butterflies metaphored something? What’s the difference between pain and happy? Can desire of sex goes harmony with love till the end? Is there any balance between Love and been loved? Maybe only the butterflies here can tell us the answers.
Quyan painted Train head, human body, and city scene in dark gray. It feels rough, passionate and hard to resist. The tide after excitement comes so freely and unbounded, just like a horse running fast on a large ground of prairie. So cool!
The lilies bond upside-down and the Yu man of Zhaoliang’s work, who’s crying in the rain and stretching his hands to the sky trembly, is he asking for help hopelessly or catharsising passionately? The pouring rain cannot stop lilies’ fragrance from spreading out into the rain. It is joyful merging but also unwillingly invading. What a mysterious man!
People’s feelings of love or hate and leave or partying seem not cared by Gouchao. Although there are a trace of similarity to Wang Yuping’s style, but diamond blue is widely used in his works, which formed his own personal style. Dating with his works, you may feel yourself reluctant to leave. Well, where on earth comes the magic power?
More secretly, the trees of Zhangtuo’s work recognized me by dreaming purple and wetly green. Does the courtyard in Ms Qiongyao’s Novel look like this? Should this be the distance between lovers? How different it can be while one is in love and out of love? What a wonder it could be if city’s morning begins like the painting!
He Jinyang’s painting organized rationally and looks very clean. There are only confidence but no hesitation contains deeply in his painting. The banquet felt tempted by the sheer beauty. What a great painting!
Members of this group-exhibition came from Luxun Art institute, now situated in Beijing Shenyang and Shanghai respectively. We will hold the exhibition once every spring, and display growths of each member.

Shun, Shanghai