重复的梦—优雅的悲伤

 

窦唯曾说过一句话：现实做不到的，就让梦去完成。

长久以来，我的睡眠一直不好，总是失眠多梦，无论什么样的梦，猛然醒来，回到现实中，都有一份说不出来的期待。弗洛伊德说“梦，终究是愿望的达成。”在梦中，这种梦境明明是自我意志的显现，而现实的理性和恐惧让我在梦中显得十分尴尬。对我来说，梦是意志或理想对自我的一种现实关怀。

我借助梦的主题，表现一种可能，这种可能是一种理性的与超现实冲突的可能。

从去年到现在，我所画的都是一些以人和植物为主的题材。画面里也总是有种悲伤的情节，这种悲伤的情节在画面里可能会转化为一种无奈。一种我想表现出：“优雅的悲伤”感觉。我想让画面更好看一些，而构成画面内容是尴尬的或者是无奈的，这是我一直想表达的。我们这代年轻人精神的迷失是很不同的，我们同样处在一个巨大的社会变革中，一个上升的时期，但我们更自我，更迷惑，可能也更没有使命感。最关心的问题可能每天都在变，因为在这个浪潮过程里，所有的一切都不重要了。工业发展和数字信息革命巨大飞跃仍然没有改变人们精神生活具体的痛苦和烦恼。人经常会觉得一生的时间是不够的，如果换一种身份或者换一个时间可能会有另一种“美好”，我试图借用了三次的来生来经历这样诱人的人间天堂。然而，这种精神上的设想无疑是让人失望的，结果都会是一样的。

 

我在通过用人与自然的尴尬关系试图表现一种梦境的解脱和现实的痛苦和无奈。我希望这种探索是有意思的，是我真实并想表达的感受。

 

 

 

Liu Zhonghua’s Gang of Four
By Fang Zhenning

The Lost Generation
If you hear Chinese artists born in the 1970s talk about the backgrounds of their works, in most cases the answers are similar, that is, “the youths of our generation are spiritually lost, only that we are lost in different labyrinths”. Liu Zhonghua is one of them.

The lost generation shares the same background and characteristic: they are amidst a tremendous social transformation that sees China rising in economy and casting off the agony and legacy that the ten-year Cultural Revolution has evoked. When the 70s generation began to have memory, what they saw was a trend flashing like a film with great speed, a trend that was the prototype of the current social transformation and predominated by those who had a sense of historical responsibility. The huge unpredictability and the long-time loneliness caused by the implementation of the family planning policy drive the 70s generation to ponder over their own value all the time. Against the backdrop of this social and family structure, the 70s generation lacks recognition and pursuit of “common character”. Different from any other generation who is always involved in the trend of the age, the 70s one is instead self-intoxicated and lost, totally without any historical responsibility. Changes may be what they care about most every day, but never seem important to them.

Elegant Sorrow

Artists are neither dinosaurs that walk in a frame, conforming to the set rules, nor an ethical defender, so they are not liable to participate in or promote anything. In this context, arts are just expressions, objective, personal, and concrete instead of conceptual. They are just the track of emotions and thoughts.

If we want to know about a man and his achievement now, we tend to google him first. Unfortunately, Liu Zhonghua who was born in 1979 turns out not to be a cyber star. He is obviously a newcomer to the arts world, as there is little on the Internet about his stories and the comments about him.

After repeatedly reading Liu’s paintings, I feel a kind of “elegant sorrow” swell up in my heart. If we regard “Repeated Dreams: I and My Three Afterlives” as his recent representative work, the language and symbols in this series are explicit.

Three Afterlives

First, the number “four” leaves us a deep impression: four people standing in a line; four shadows cast on the ground; four people simultaneously raising their arms in the same way to keep off the strong sunlight; four people walking on the top of the mountain in the horizontal way; four people standing in a circle watching a Chinese dragon crawling; four people reflected in the river; four arms out of the river thumbing up; four paper-made flying vehicles floating on the water… the first sight of four people will put people in the mind of the Beatles, but it is a coincidence. “Four” here has the same implication: Liu’s sorrow and the three afterlives he hopes for.

Then the scenery we see is lonely, almost colorless, unsympathetic and helpless to any lonely soul. The white tree trunks are like frost in early winter. But when you see the people’s clothes and water, you discover that the white is not frost, but the lining paper for “elegant sorrow”.
Liu once wrote a play called I and My Three Afterlives. The four people in his painting are an extension of his play. In the composition of painting, four people are an even number and also a very difficult number to deal with. Artists always try to avoid the number while Liu used it as the main theme of his painting. He was trying to express the collective sorrow and its strength by means of this frigidity and awkwardness. This kind of expression appears occasionally in contemporary Chinese painting, but Liu finds that it may be used as a sign pose in any scene and that, once it appears, the atmosphere changes accordingly, as if a pool of water ripples and resonates with its surroundings when a sign post is thrown into it. This is a kind of reaction that is invisible and imperceptible to us.

Painting Becomes a Fan of Pictures.

People are the main body of painting, but scenery is not unimportant. Trees and other plants as well as water are not only the accompanying scenery on the stage, but also the onlookers of people. Liu attempts to express emotions and feelings from the perspective of nature, from which we can sense an obvious element of symbolism in the painting.

Liu Zhonghua graduated from the printmaking department of Luxun Academy of Fine Arts, Shenyang, in 2003, therefore we can see the traces of printmaking in his works. Printmaking demands unique observation methods, that is, an artist must develop his ability to crystallize what he sees, to abstract natural elements. This kind of training produces many artists, among whom are a few successful contemporary Chinese artists who majored in printmaking. Consequently, printmaking methodology may serve as a breakthrough point for our study of the success of these artists.

Liu has his own way of production. He adjusts the picture to be used in the computer before his preliminary sketch. That’s why his painting is so photographic. The traditional painting methods try to thicken the flat surface, and the expression of space and levels is the indicator of one’s basic skills. The contemporary painting, on the contrary, never emphasizes thickness, multi-level, and distance, but flatness and thinness. When the photographic beauty prevails, painting is not unlikely to become a fan of pictures. New painting language is imperceptibly born in harmony.

Beyond Painting

Liu’s pursuit of easel painting results from his basic training. We cannot judge the essence of painting by its form. Up to now, methods other than painting itself in the arts world emerge one after another, but whenever we look at Van Gogh’s works, we will never refuse to appreciate them simply because they are conservative easel painting. Instead, his works are always like flames burning in our chests. This is a feeling that transcends painting and reaches the level that is resonant with the universe.

Painting is neither the beginning nor the end of arts. Liu’s ideas of painting are from a variety of resources, of which Schopenhauer and Nietzsche are his basic reading materials. New media are a new area that he wants to try. But whatever area one enters, what dominates the palace of art is none other than the soul.

It is said that the 70s generation lacks the historical responsibility, but they have another sense of the age. They believe that history is undergoing a new era, a more independent, more self-centered era. When one worships egoism as the spirit of the times or the engine of the age, believe it or not, he must be a young man.