From
“Story of Town” to “Times Tag”
Impressions of Liao Zhenwu’s Paintings
Located in the hinterland of China, Sichuan Province
boasts vast expanse of Chengdu Plain, which abounds with numerous
lakes and fertile land, and is thus known as the “land of plenty”.
Although the economy there seems to be backward and time seems
to go slowly compared with the high technology, modernization
and quick tempo of life and work in the open costal cities, people
feel relaxed in psychology and time and it is possible for them
to sense and taste the minute changes in the whole process of
economic development. Without needing to face the clash between
the modernization and commercialization directly, they are not
as disconcerted and politically and socially conscious as people
of other places. As a result, we find many local artists are limited
in their views as they only focus on representation and description
of the scenes of local life.
The works of Liao Zhenwu are also characterized by the distinct
local features. His early works could be divided into two types:
one was to represent the teahouses and things happening there
in the small town of Sichuan and the other was to describe
the motorcycles running here, there and everywhere. Teahouse culture
is distinct in Sichuan from that of other places such as Suzhou
of Jiangsu Province and Hangzhou of Zhejiang Province, which is
characterized by tranquility, elegance and relaxation. In Sichuan,
teahouses are full of hubbubs and vivacity, where people play
board and card games, make fun of each other or even gamble by
playing a kind of poker game named “Landlord”. Those who lose
the games, whether rich or poor, old or young, may be pasted with
slips of paper on their faces or go down under the tables. Teahouses
in other places are known for high prices, while in Chengdu teahouses rank by popularity rather than prices. Therefore, teahouses
here cater largely to common and average people, where people
of all social sectors with the same interest and tastes gather
together to kill their time. Therefore teahouses are the best
place to observe the life and activities of people at various
social levels in Sichuan. Compared with the large costal cities which have entered the time of
automobiles, in the inland provinces of China, mopeds and motorcycles
carrying both people and goods and always overloaded, which is
against the traffic rules, feature largely in urban and rural
traffic. Their existence not only represents the economic recovery
and take-off of the local economies but also shows people’s consciousness
of market economy and low-priced labor force in small and medium-sized
cities. As for a province as Sichuan which abounds with mountains,
motorcycles take the place of bicycles to become the most important
means of transport for people due to their low cost and high efficiency.
As the old Chinese saying goes, the falling of one leaf heralds
the coming of autumn. Liao Zhenwu uses the two leaves of teahouse
and motorcycles to describe the life of common people and customs
of the land of Shu (Sichuan Province) vividly. His works include photos and oil paintings. As for
his photos, he is inclined to take the horizontal panoramas to
represent the overall situation of the town, which reminds people
of the famous scroll of painting entitled The Festival of Pure
Brightness on the River drawn by Zhang Zeduan of the Song
Dynasty. In terms of his oil paintings, he prefers to include
a pair of characters in his works. His early works showed his
inclination to tell stories and construct plots, but his recent
works show his exploration of formal languages in patterns and
his style also changes from the previous impressive and vivid
representation to less intensive description which serves as the
basis for the format of lump structure.
In his latest works of windows series, we find his artistic
views has transformed as his life and work are now based in such
a large metropolis as Beijing.
He becomes interested in the window models which can be seen everywhere
along the streets of large cities. Walter Benjamin’s description of the streets and shop
windows of western cities as well as the loafers or vagrants wandering
around the cities at night is, to a great extent, applicable to
today’s urban scenes in China. The models in the shop windows
symbolize the commercial society and also represent the indifference
of the consumption society. People are attached to the idolized
symbolic landscapes and even abandon themselves to such attachment
which is, in nature, not real at all. Artists are quite sensitive
to such a phenomenon. In fact, quite a few artists presented works
with similar subjects. However, Liao’s new paintings are free
from unified idolized stiff faces and expression. Instead, he
attaches importance to representation of the interactive relations
among a group of models. Moreover, his way of representation is
not influenced by the plane treatment method prevalent in the
current art field. As a result, we can see the characters in his
works are all like sculptures, with no efforts made to represent
the expressions. Sometimes the heads of the characters are even
enveloped by clothes-what the artist wants to show us is the materialized
world where people’s real natures compromise to the materialized
desires. For this purpose, the artist weakens the bodies of models,
which seem to be hard as rocks, with his own loose way of representation
of lump structures. In this way, his artistic way of representing
the urban consumption atmosphere emerged. On one hand, he grasps
the indifferent and dying pulse of the consumption society; on
the other hand, he tries to change such a pulse with drawing skills.
It is the contradictory way of representation of the characters
in the paintings that explains why the new works of Liao Zhenwu
are critical of the cultures and customs of the consumption society.
Basically Liao Zhenwu chose cool colors of black, white and
grey for this series of works instead of reproducing the world
with various colors, which, to some extent, shows that the artist
tries to convey his ideas about the intrinsic characteristics
of the world. That is to say, under the surface of leisure or
hubbubs, the world seems to be a place of apathy and changes which
people cannot know or control. For the majority of Chinese people,
control of their fate is a topic which seems to be too unrealistic
for them to ponder upon due to the current economic and educational
reality. They have no way but to choose such a kind of life.
In his way of artistic creation based on the living environments
he is familiar with, Liao first told us stories about the town
he lived in and then describes the shop windows of the metropolis.
Thus he provides us with various versions of the times tags vividly
and endows his works with authenticity and human-oriented feature.
Refusing to follow the current artistic trend or the fashionable
styles, he, undoubtedly, will blaze a new trail in artistic creation.
For artists, the most important thing is to strive to create an
original form of visual language. Good luck to Liao and may he
accomplish more in his way of artistic creation!
Gao Ling
Doctor of Fine Arts, critic and exhibition
planner
From Chicago, America on Oct.
27-28, 2007
