"In even the most perfect reproduction, one thing is lacking: the here and now of the work of art--its unique existence in a particular place. It is this unique existence, and nothing else, that bears the mark of the history to which the work has been subject." (Walter Benjamin) I stroll down South Mao Ming Road, pass the old Jing Jiang Hotel, and turn on Ju Lu Street as the buttonwood trees shade the ground with crushing patterns. I enter the maze of the Shi Ku Men and turn down the second alley on the left. Passing through the tattered black door, it closes behind me with a creaky thud. The daylight flows softly through the translucent roof of the patio. The worn, cracked floor tiles have maintained their delicate pattern despite their eighty years. A spider diligently weaves its web in the corner. The sounds of men and women chatting outside seep through the walls like waves of words and phrases from another world. I switch on the lamp, and light pours down. My silk canvas shimmers like the skin of a living being; my thoughts, mind, body, the smell of air, the faintest sound, the past forgotten or remembered, and the lingering future--all are captured in the lumen of light in the here and now. Slight and transparent, countless random factors float and fleet like dust, disconnected and seemingly negligible, yet intoxicating. As light needs time to transfer,...
And the sun still as strong as before. Its impatient brushes were painting the world. Thomas Tranströmar, Secret on the Way Present Participle I presents a collection of works by artists that have been collaborating with our gallery in recent years. It is an exhibition aiming at showing the other side of the creative process that every artist engages in his/her everyday life consistently and whole-heartedly. Here art making has become a habit of life and yet it always encounterschallenge and breakthrough. Without art and artists, our gallery walls will be empty and our hearts will be desolate. Every brushstroke left by the artist is processing towards the understanding of our world. They are the tangible remains of our memory, passion. love, sadness and longing. Because of this, we want to believe the world is still wonderful. This is a promise of our belief in the future and it is happening right now.
Their inward thought is， that their houses shall continue for ever，and their dwelling places to all generations； they call their lands after their own names. Old Testament, Psalms, 49:11 What is the city over the mountains Cracks and reforms and bursts in the violet air The Waste Land T.S.Eliot The scene is compact, however a void rules its background. Just what is it? A hanging garden? A city within a city? The tower of Babel? A metropolitan generating its own explosion? A future invention for vertical living? Who can see these cities? Who can see the people on the stage? Depth separates a city from a stage. The surfaces of both being lifted and installed in a four-sided frame has now become a painting. In a godless nation where spiritual experience is a rare phenomenon, can we still demand ideals and beliefs? For artists, especially for painters, we should not ask them what they want to express in their paintings, but what we can see in them. The fundamental task of an artist is not to deal with social critique or self-irony, rather it is to deal with those existential dilemma that we all encounter. No one ever asked us if we wanted to be born, but nevertheless we are all cast into this world, gathered in one sphere which we call “the city” . The main task of a painter is to present the world. Although he may only...
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1978 was the year when China Art Academy for the first time restarted the university examination system, years after it had been closed down during the Cultural Revolution, and enrolled the first bench of students. Ma Lu was one of those first students, enlisting in the oil painting department. The academy curriculum offered Ma Lu a solid art education with emphasis on realistic painting techniques and theories. After graduation from the Academy Ma Lu got an opportunity to carry on his art studies in the Art Academy of Hamburg, Germany. The 1980s was the heyday of Neo-Expressionism in Germany and, needless to say, Ma Lu was very much influenced by this art movement. Already during his school years, the start of Chinese Avant-garde art representing by the 85-movement had also affected Ma Lu. There was a strong urge for artists at that time to abandon the tradition of realistic painting and start to paint abstract paintings. For Ma Lu it was a natural choice. When Ma Lu returned to China after his art studies in Germany, he was regarded as the carrier of Avant-garde Western art. However, for Ma Lu the expressive style of German Neo Expressionism didn’t seem to suit his quiet personality so well. He didn’t feel the freedom of expressing himself in such paintings. He made adorable paintings at that time, yet, they seemed to have lacked energy and to be filled with doubts in some way....
“No rules, No games” as the old Chinese saying indicates rules restrain the fun from the games. Is it what Pan Xiaorong intends to tell us through his art works? In a way it is true. The basic elements of Pan’s works are very much based on rules, not least in his early works, ruler was applied to assist him making such tidy and well-organized surfaces. We can almost imagine Pan Xiaorong as an artist sitting at his desk caving paper with knife and ruler day after day, soberly and persistently. An artist whose narration is expressed through paper-cutting knife, white cardboard paper and black ink, Pan has to rely on rules and rulers to constrain himself. It may sound like a boring and repetitive labor, one who works in solitude in accompanying of his own natural endurance. Pan works with no models. The choice of his working tools is in itself experimental although he has no intention to abstract any natural subjects through his creating, nor is he commenting on any philosophical discourse. The white cardboard paper erects his impulse of expressing and the rest of the tools: paper-cutting knife and ink, are all part of the experience. He spends time with them: the smoothness of the cardboard paper, the texture of the inside of the paper revealed when knife cuts through it, the geometric shades formed under different lighting, the rhythm of black and white color bouncing between...
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