Currently, there seems to have the astonishing success on the social living in China in a rational way, the economical living is becoming better and better. But, along with the exploration of the global economical crises, a common and impendent ideal of destroying is spreading among the common people just like plague. Such ideal is the fear to the current life, that is, they fear every important and valuable matter are meeting their doomsday.
The anxiety and fearing are controlling everyone, from worker to peasant, from capitalist to farmer worker, from millionaire to beggars, from policeman to criminal; nobody can have a narrow escape. Everybody is living in the fearing for the indefinite future everyday, then they feel that they are losing in a void. The worrying to the living in the future, the distrust to other people, the doubt to the fate and the worrying to the possible danger of being the victim, all of these can make the people feel that they are discarded.
When most of the people feet that they are or will be discarded, that is, our realistic living become impossible in terms of the spirit. The people can no more find the meaning of living in the impossible realistic leaving, so they feel that the living is insufferable. So they began to evade in the diseases, the diseases become their protectors to make them evade from the reality.
When most of the people of a country or nationality evade in the diseases, it is the time when this country is in urgent diseases? But who can give the receipt for China, this huge patient?
The explanation to the works:
The works of Li Qing is spiritual expressionist, the entire images of his works give us a feeling of horror with depth, tension and even some ominous feeling. This feeling is just the feeling of uncertainty that the current Chinese society is facing the sophisticated contradiction and the presenting situation of turbulence. When facing the current society, after the so-called common rich, they feel anxious in their spirit. The human being is the human being, for after meeting the basic needs such as material, physiological and sexual desires, they don’t feel perfect just like animals. The spiritual and psychological satisfaction of the human being can make us feel harmony and perfect. While various facts in current China, such as the various kinds of social contractions and conflictions, perishing of the traditional ethics, lacking of human conscience, bankruptcy of the social credibility, nonfeasance of governments, and the oppression to the underclass, such facts make our happiness index decrease. On the paintings made by Li Qing, the eyesights coming from the hell don’t make us feel a world of flower carpets, but a world of mental diseases filled with craziness, bloodsucking, unfeeling and motionless. While, such world is real and touchable to many people.
The explanation to the works:
The works of Tang Jianying presents the mind and spiritual world of the criminals through the description of the prisons and criminals. Those people of which the personal freedom has been restricted have the special researching value on sociology and psychology. The criminal is a special group in the social structure, just like a tumor in a human’s body. But this tumor is also a life body, it has its own system of self-development, growth and destroying. This system actually reflects the health index of a society in another aspect. In the current Chinese society, affected by the transformation, there is a upside-down changing of the ethics, moral, spirit and faith of the total society. After the ruling of materialism of more than 30 years, the new-type socialist ethics and moral system established in the New China collapsed totally. Such transformation changes the previous spirit and thought of the people thoroughly. The new social economic structure and political order made the problems of new-type social criminal presenting. While, the transformation of the crime types, the criminal psychology and mental and other problems are extremely valuable to the researching of the problems such as the current social contradictions and conflictions. We can even say that, the crime is the alternative flower of civilization of the human beings. Actually, the find words of the human beings, such as justice, nobility, trust and benevolence, if they are not notated along with the criminals, their connotation will be void. While in the period of collusion between government and businessmen, the union of cops and robbers and confusion of right and wrong, who are the real criminals? The works of Tang Jianying can make us introspect the real situation of this society via the description of the criminals.
The explanation to the works:
The works of Wu Rijin has the direction of some fable. Via the transformation and camera shooting of the visual aspects from wolf to human beings, he presents the crazy, mad and destroying development and status of our times. The previous representative works of Wu Rijin – the series of City describes the unimaginable and crazy transformation of the recent 30 years in China. This head portrait is his new trial, though these works are the head portraits of the persons, Wu Rijin is still expressing the mental feeling of the wolves in the wasteland. Actually, the wolf in the wasteland is the artist himself, what he describes is the mental crisis of the artist himself. In the reality, the degeneration in the moral and culture is giving off a rancid odor, while the artist is incompatible with this society. In his opinions, everything in the reality is just like the games, we are in the period of great transformation. Though we can feel that the new times will come, but the direct material benefits can be seen here are there in the realistic world, the spiritual ethic is not paid attention, the traditional culture and the thought of humanitarism is destroyed. There is a wolf coming from the wasteland, it symbolizes the diseases and crisis, but not destroy, not the crisis leading to death. Its roar is a kind of treatment, the receipt of this treatment is: it hopes the human being don’t substitute the real culture with the shallow and commercialized false culture.
The explanation to the works:
The works of Wang Baoming is a kind of painting equipment. He created such effects with a kind of industrial vesicant. The feeling of the vesicant is just like our society nowadays, it is prosperous apparently, but it is rotten, degraded, dirty and void substantially. Such eccentric and malformed facts are watching us, and making us have to review our living – what made our living so weary today? What made our spirit and faith so confused and vague? What makes us cannot find our exit and direction? Such rotten faces are watching us scomfully. They are seeming to say: these people must be crazy, or why they are enduring such bad and wither life without revolting? Whey are they willing to endure the abusing of power of the authority and dictator and living with self-mockery?
The explanation to the works:
There are many series of the works of Yang Jian. In this exhibition there is one of his series. These works can give the morbid feeling in terms of the images. But we can see some estheticism in this feeling. Yang Jian is not an idealized artist, but an artist with the disposition of tradition style. This disposition comes from the love to the traditional painting and painting style. He is researching and trying many kinds of style, and each kind of style and disposition have been stamped by his personnel feeling. This can only be done by the artist with the instinct of painting. This groups of painting of Yang Jian express the psychological problems puzzling most of the common people in our times via the description of the faces with mental diseases. There had been no Chinese people like us, who have to face the cruel competition solely and are destined to fail. Because we are in an environment in which we must survive by gambling. There problems can be reflected from the faces of the patients of mental diseases, but they are not only existing in these patients, but also in everybody. Such problems are that most of us are destined to face.
The explanation to the works:
The series of We made by Zhang Xuehai come from of the panic generated in the times of SARS. At that time, the war in the Middle East makes the panic even worse, at the time, everyone felt that they are very tender. The reason of generating such feeling comes from the natural on one hand and comes from the society on the other hand. The force of nature makes the human being feel their tininess and shrug again. While, the social war is man-made, they can be avoided, but they are happening. This history can not be changed; all such content are reported everyday from TV and newspapers. We see the messages relating to the death everyday, the people have no places to hide, and the horror and damage are shrouding on the heart of everyone. So he is painting such black and lumbersome works. In terms of the images, he tries to express his feeling with the features of Chinese wash painting. The effects have been reached. These paintings with water stain can give a feeling of being oppressed and humiliated. Such feeling doesn’t come from the surface of the painting, but it has really expressed the contradiction, pain, anxiety and struggling of the artists. Such painting makes us think the survival of the human beings as well as the current cruel social conditions.