Beyond the Range of Vision
Mar 18 - Apr 24, 2023
Mar 18 - Apr 24, 2023
Press Release
Beyond the Range of Vision
2023.3.18-2023.4.24
Opening Time : 2023.3.18 (Sat.) 16:00
Curator: FENG Boyi
Artists: HUANG Liyan, LI Yiwen, MA Wenting,
WANG Yuanzheng, ZHANG Wenzhao
Whitebox Art Center
“Hence world picture, when understood essentially, does not mean a picture of the world but the world conceived and grasped as picture.” —Martin Heidegger（The Age of the World Picture, 1938）
"Ji mu" is quoted from LI Shangyin's poems in the Tang Dynasty, which refers to what the eyes can see, that is, what the eyes can see is the entire reality. This reality though is not the real scene but a situation that emphasizes the return of painting creation to reality.
In the uncertain vicissitudes of this world and the impact of the epidemic, we pay attention to the organic connection and transformation between fiction and daily experience, generate personal cognition through trivial narration, and create the subtle relationship between human beings, objects, and scenery in painting.
The experimentation lies in the reconstruction of the narrative and one’s ability to imagine the people and their situations they are in, containing their expression of emotions under a certain circumstance featuring practicality and simplicity, as well as the solid character of the art of painting. The subjects of the landscapes and everyday narratives are, at the same time, absurd, humorous and self-deprecating.
The seemingly compulsive daily manual work reflects artists fascination with the stickiness and texture of painting. Their paintings are more like the handwriting of their existence, and the visual texts have been deeply engraved with the marks and logos of their creations.
The exhibition " Beyond the Range of Vision " is on view from Mar 18 - Apr 24, 2023. Through this exhibition, explore their knowledge and awareness of human society.
2023.3.18-2023.4.24
Opening Time : 2023.3.18 (Sat.) 16:00
Curator: FENG Boyi
Artists: HUANG Liyan, LI Yiwen, MA Wenting,
WANG Yuanzheng, ZHANG Wenzhao
Whitebox Art Center
“Hence world picture, when understood essentially, does not mean a picture of the world but the world conceived and grasped as picture.” —Martin Heidegger（The Age of the World Picture, 1938）
"Ji mu" is quoted from LI Shangyin's poems in the Tang Dynasty, which refers to what the eyes can see, that is, what the eyes can see is the entire reality. This reality though is not the real scene but a situation that emphasizes the return of painting creation to reality.
In the uncertain vicissitudes of this world and the impact of the epidemic, we pay attention to the organic connection and transformation between fiction and daily experience, generate personal cognition through trivial narration, and create the subtle relationship between human beings, objects, and scenery in painting.
The experimentation lies in the reconstruction of the narrative and one’s ability to imagine the people and their situations they are in, containing their expression of emotions under a certain circumstance featuring practicality and simplicity, as well as the solid character of the art of painting. The subjects of the landscapes and everyday narratives are, at the same time, absurd, humorous and self-deprecating.
The seemingly compulsive daily manual work reflects artists fascination with the stickiness and texture of painting. Their paintings are more like the handwriting of their existence, and the visual texts have been deeply engraved with the marks and logos of their creations.
The exhibition " Beyond the Range of Vision " is on view from Mar 18 - Apr 24, 2023. Through this exhibition, explore their knowledge and awareness of human society.
Curator Article
Reality Is just an Illusion That Lasts Too Long
Feng Boyi
In the 1990s, installations, behavior, and images, in addition to paintings, of contemporary art began to flourish in China. This multi-medium approach mainly found it roots in the "Art Trend of Thoughts that emerged during the mid-1980s", among which the art work at the China Modern Art Exhibition in 1989 can be said was an intensive presentation that directly affected the ecological changes of contemporary art in China during the 1990s. The novelty and unknown possibilities that are inspired by the new media are always sensed, utilized, and tried out by young artists, even attracting many people to follow suit. Some artists, including those who had already become quite successful in painting abandoned painting and turned their attention to multi-media creation, with great achievements as a result. At that time, some artists joked that even idiots could become artists if they tried really hard! There are also some artists who may have poor painting skills which makes it difficult for them to make a living in the field. However, because the multi-media approach no longer relies on the so-called painting skills as it did in the past and only emphasizes the concept of art, an installation piece of artwork can be done well with just a finished product or a hired assistant, thus opening up another successful way for them to create art.
I know a veteran artist, who failed the examination when applying for a course for further studies at the Oil Painting Department of the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA). He failed because he did not meet the requirements and conditions for the painting modeling of the CAFA system. But later, his installation artwork that was based on his own experience and memory activated or stimulated his special sensitivity to materials and space. Perhaps he is more suitable for doing installation art and now has become an outstanding artist who is active at home and abroad. Of course, some artists who were not good at modeling turned to creating multi-media art. At that time, we lacked understanding and judgment of multi-media art, which inevitably led to the phenomenon that poor and excellent artwork was mixed together, and there were not just a few. In fact, the sensitivity to contemporary culture will lead to constant changes in artistic concepts, media utilization, and visual language methodology, rather than the distinction between the old and the new media itself.
Therefore, I have never believed the conclusion of some paranoid critics who say "painting has died”. Rather I believe that it has become more difficult to engage in the art of painting. The first reason is that the history of painting is too long and contains too many painting masters whose study of and experiment in painting and the various styles, genres and schools developed by them have become hard to reach and surpass. Perhaps though, it may have demonstrated the confidence, perseverance and tenancy of the artists who are still devoted to the art of painting.
Secondly, the knowledge of painting which we have accumulated, the perception of modeling, color toning and structure of artworks, the ability to judge pieces of artwork with just a glance will be hard to conceal in either an honest or dishonest way. These are basic qualities of a painter. Unlike when it comes to multi-media and the experimental or obscure and pretentious works of so-called concept artists, it is so difficult to judge and may even feel at a loss of understanding. This also means painting artists have undergone more stress, hard work and difficulties, which shows that it takes a stronger heart to stay committed to painting.
Thirdly, contemporary art has become omnipotent, especially with the arrival of new media art or the combination of art and science, the art of painting, despite being enjoyed by people, has been struggling in the midst of digital screens and the fleeting popular and consumer culture, even to the point where the art of painting has been squeezed into a corner and come to a somewhat abrupt end.
I have a middle-aged artist friend who was once young and talented. One day he asked me, “Do you think there is still a future in painting?” I remember saying, “Of course! The medium is just the medium itself, including the traditional way of painting.” The key is how to use different medium to convey the subject matter, content and cultural relevance you want to express. If you feel that painting or another multi-media approach best reflects your creative aspirations and achieves the best results, then use that! He later chose to work mainly with painting, and he felt far more comfortable than he had previously doing installations and the like. The case of this artist that I knew shows that the medium does not matter, it can be traditional or new, and in no way implies the misconception that painting is archaic and only new media is contemporary. In fact, it is just a matter of how the artist chooses the appropriate medium to express themselves, and how artists establish themselves with the medium they choose. Today, there are many artists who have made a name for themselves in the world of painting, and the contemporary style is still fully able to express their knowledge and awareness of human society through the old ways of painting.
Based on the above observations, the exhibition "Beyond the Range of Vision" curated in the White Box Art Centre tries to select visual samples from paintings created by young and middle-aged artists in recent years. The artists include HUANG Liyan, LI Yiwen, MA Wenting, WANG Yuanzheng and ZHANG Wenzhao, all of whom I am familiar with and who have remained faithful to the painting approach.
"Ji mu " is quoted from LI Shangyin's poems in the Tang Dynasty, which refers to what the eyes can see, that is, what the eyes can see is the entire reality. This reality though is not the real scene but a situation that emphasizes the return of painting creation to reality. In the uncertain vicissitudes of this world and the impact of the epidemic, we pay attention to the organic connection and transformation between fiction and daily experience, generate personal cognition through trivial narration, and create the subtle relationship between human beings, objects, and scenery in painting.
The experimentation lies in the reconstruction of the narrative and one’s ability to imagine the people and their situations they are in, containing their expression of emotions under a certain circumstance featuring practicality and simplicity, as well as the solid character of the art of painting. The subjects of the landscapes and everyday narratives are, at the same time, absurd, humorous and self-deprecating. The seemingly compulsive daily manual work reflects artists fascination with the stickiness and texture of painting. Their paintings are more like the handwriting of their existence, and the visual texts have been deeply engraved with the marks and logos of their creations.
Due to the richness and complexity of the transformation of Chinese society, the ups and downs that have occurred especially in recent years have impacted each of us without exception. It is also during the transformation of this era that the artistic creation emerged from artists facing reality and was a way to reflect the culture relevance, being incorporated into the personal experience and memories of individuals and became one distinct characteristic of Chinese contemporary art. The empirical presence demonstrated by these five artists is also increasingly clearly placed in their own personal vision range. More often than not, their paintings reflect a kind of spiritual reversion and return, reflecting their values and emotions as an artist.
In this narrative process of theirs, most of them are accustomed to starting from the perspective of reality, searching for ephemeral memories in the space and time of reality, measuring the changes of reality by a kind of temporal counterpoint, and then focus on the fate of individuals in the context of reality with it, as well as the situation, attitude and transformation of the individual during the process. This is not merely a representation of the changes in people and society and the passage of time, but more importantly a reproduction of the vicissitudes and absurd situations exhibited in the human world.
Reality is nothing but an illusion that lasts too long. For them, it is a metaphorical manifestation rather than a scenario. The familiar history and the current situation, familiar details of life and the environment in which an individual was brought up serve as precious memories of individual experience and regional culture. In an era where internet culture is growing like barnyard grass, we no longer receive information from the single source of texts and images in books as before, instead, we discover, perceive, make judgements and process complicated and changing realities from the vast array of texts, pictures and videos from the various social media we face every day.
Therefore, their paintings, intentionally or unintentionally, have become resources for retaining “authenticity” as well as resisting “formatting”, “screens” and “fragmentation”, and the root of a sense of security. Maybe their creation was determined by the current special historical situation of China. This is an unusual group of urban artists, their sensitivity, their sharpness and the unique experiences they have accumulated, together with their reflections, critical spirit, humorous approach, etc. are all worthy of attention.
At the same time, based on reality’s relation to the times and social power, it often transcends the artist's expression, and the individual is not only small and powerless, but probably also fake, that is, it does not really have much of a personal uniqueness - something that distinguishes it from others. In fact, "Beyond the Range of Vision" is shaped by the spell of the times and society, rather than just a personal experience and expression that we thought it was.
The artwork of these artists in the exhibition resonates with me because I have experienced similar scenes, psychological conditions and so on as those portrayed in the paintings. In fact, there is more than just the one "me" in a piece of artwork and one "me" as a viewer, everyone is familiar with these and that is why the artwork resonates with viewers. But this resonance itself requires further reflection, because what resonates is not something that grows naturally out of an individual themselves, nor is it something that we as individuals actively seek to obtain, but rather something that is imposed on us by an era and society, and almost no one can avoid or reject this imposition. We have to grow up following the requirements of the age and society we live in, which in time leads to the historical fact that what we thought was our individual experience and memory is in fact almost common to each one of us.
Feng Boyi
In the 1990s, installations, behavior, and images, in addition to paintings, of contemporary art began to flourish in China. This multi-medium approach mainly found it roots in the "Art Trend of Thoughts that emerged during the mid-1980s", among which the art work at the China Modern Art Exhibition in 1989 can be said was an intensive presentation that directly affected the ecological changes of contemporary art in China during the 1990s. The novelty and unknown possibilities that are inspired by the new media are always sensed, utilized, and tried out by young artists, even attracting many people to follow suit. Some artists, including those who had already become quite successful in painting abandoned painting and turned their attention to multi-media creation, with great achievements as a result. At that time, some artists joked that even idiots could become artists if they tried really hard! There are also some artists who may have poor painting skills which makes it difficult for them to make a living in the field. However, because the multi-media approach no longer relies on the so-called painting skills as it did in the past and only emphasizes the concept of art, an installation piece of artwork can be done well with just a finished product or a hired assistant, thus opening up another successful way for them to create art.
I know a veteran artist, who failed the examination when applying for a course for further studies at the Oil Painting Department of the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA). He failed because he did not meet the requirements and conditions for the painting modeling of the CAFA system. But later, his installation artwork that was based on his own experience and memory activated or stimulated his special sensitivity to materials and space. Perhaps he is more suitable for doing installation art and now has become an outstanding artist who is active at home and abroad. Of course, some artists who were not good at modeling turned to creating multi-media art. At that time, we lacked understanding and judgment of multi-media art, which inevitably led to the phenomenon that poor and excellent artwork was mixed together, and there were not just a few. In fact, the sensitivity to contemporary culture will lead to constant changes in artistic concepts, media utilization, and visual language methodology, rather than the distinction between the old and the new media itself.
Therefore, I have never believed the conclusion of some paranoid critics who say "painting has died”. Rather I believe that it has become more difficult to engage in the art of painting. The first reason is that the history of painting is too long and contains too many painting masters whose study of and experiment in painting and the various styles, genres and schools developed by them have become hard to reach and surpass. Perhaps though, it may have demonstrated the confidence, perseverance and tenancy of the artists who are still devoted to the art of painting.
Secondly, the knowledge of painting which we have accumulated, the perception of modeling, color toning and structure of artworks, the ability to judge pieces of artwork with just a glance will be hard to conceal in either an honest or dishonest way. These are basic qualities of a painter. Unlike when it comes to multi-media and the experimental or obscure and pretentious works of so-called concept artists, it is so difficult to judge and may even feel at a loss of understanding. This also means painting artists have undergone more stress, hard work and difficulties, which shows that it takes a stronger heart to stay committed to painting.
Thirdly, contemporary art has become omnipotent, especially with the arrival of new media art or the combination of art and science, the art of painting, despite being enjoyed by people, has been struggling in the midst of digital screens and the fleeting popular and consumer culture, even to the point where the art of painting has been squeezed into a corner and come to a somewhat abrupt end.
I have a middle-aged artist friend who was once young and talented. One day he asked me, “Do you think there is still a future in painting?” I remember saying, “Of course! The medium is just the medium itself, including the traditional way of painting.” The key is how to use different medium to convey the subject matter, content and cultural relevance you want to express. If you feel that painting or another multi-media approach best reflects your creative aspirations and achieves the best results, then use that! He later chose to work mainly with painting, and he felt far more comfortable than he had previously doing installations and the like. The case of this artist that I knew shows that the medium does not matter, it can be traditional or new, and in no way implies the misconception that painting is archaic and only new media is contemporary. In fact, it is just a matter of how the artist chooses the appropriate medium to express themselves, and how artists establish themselves with the medium they choose. Today, there are many artists who have made a name for themselves in the world of painting, and the contemporary style is still fully able to express their knowledge and awareness of human society through the old ways of painting.
Based on the above observations, the exhibition "Beyond the Range of Vision" curated in the White Box Art Centre tries to select visual samples from paintings created by young and middle-aged artists in recent years. The artists include HUANG Liyan, LI Yiwen, MA Wenting, WANG Yuanzheng and ZHANG Wenzhao, all of whom I am familiar with and who have remained faithful to the painting approach.
"Ji mu " is quoted from LI Shangyin's poems in the Tang Dynasty, which refers to what the eyes can see, that is, what the eyes can see is the entire reality. This reality though is not the real scene but a situation that emphasizes the return of painting creation to reality. In the uncertain vicissitudes of this world and the impact of the epidemic, we pay attention to the organic connection and transformation between fiction and daily experience, generate personal cognition through trivial narration, and create the subtle relationship between human beings, objects, and scenery in painting.
The experimentation lies in the reconstruction of the narrative and one’s ability to imagine the people and their situations they are in, containing their expression of emotions under a certain circumstance featuring practicality and simplicity, as well as the solid character of the art of painting. The subjects of the landscapes and everyday narratives are, at the same time, absurd, humorous and self-deprecating. The seemingly compulsive daily manual work reflects artists fascination with the stickiness and texture of painting. Their paintings are more like the handwriting of their existence, and the visual texts have been deeply engraved with the marks and logos of their creations.
Due to the richness and complexity of the transformation of Chinese society, the ups and downs that have occurred especially in recent years have impacted each of us without exception. It is also during the transformation of this era that the artistic creation emerged from artists facing reality and was a way to reflect the culture relevance, being incorporated into the personal experience and memories of individuals and became one distinct characteristic of Chinese contemporary art. The empirical presence demonstrated by these five artists is also increasingly clearly placed in their own personal vision range. More often than not, their paintings reflect a kind of spiritual reversion and return, reflecting their values and emotions as an artist.
In this narrative process of theirs, most of them are accustomed to starting from the perspective of reality, searching for ephemeral memories in the space and time of reality, measuring the changes of reality by a kind of temporal counterpoint, and then focus on the fate of individuals in the context of reality with it, as well as the situation, attitude and transformation of the individual during the process. This is not merely a representation of the changes in people and society and the passage of time, but more importantly a reproduction of the vicissitudes and absurd situations exhibited in the human world.
Reality is nothing but an illusion that lasts too long. For them, it is a metaphorical manifestation rather than a scenario. The familiar history and the current situation, familiar details of life and the environment in which an individual was brought up serve as precious memories of individual experience and regional culture. In an era where internet culture is growing like barnyard grass, we no longer receive information from the single source of texts and images in books as before, instead, we discover, perceive, make judgements and process complicated and changing realities from the vast array of texts, pictures and videos from the various social media we face every day.
Therefore, their paintings, intentionally or unintentionally, have become resources for retaining “authenticity” as well as resisting “formatting”, “screens” and “fragmentation”, and the root of a sense of security. Maybe their creation was determined by the current special historical situation of China. This is an unusual group of urban artists, their sensitivity, their sharpness and the unique experiences they have accumulated, together with their reflections, critical spirit, humorous approach, etc. are all worthy of attention.
At the same time, based on reality’s relation to the times and social power, it often transcends the artist's expression, and the individual is not only small and powerless, but probably also fake, that is, it does not really have much of a personal uniqueness - something that distinguishes it from others. In fact, "Beyond the Range of Vision" is shaped by the spell of the times and society, rather than just a personal experience and expression that we thought it was.
The artwork of these artists in the exhibition resonates with me because I have experienced similar scenes, psychological conditions and so on as those portrayed in the paintings. In fact, there is more than just the one "me" in a piece of artwork and one "me" as a viewer, everyone is familiar with these and that is why the artwork resonates with viewers. But this resonance itself requires further reflection, because what resonates is not something that grows naturally out of an individual themselves, nor is it something that we as individuals actively seek to obtain, but rather something that is imposed on us by an era and society, and almost no one can avoid or reject this imposition. We have to grow up following the requirements of the age and society we live in, which in time leads to the historical fact that what we thought was our individual experience and memory is in fact almost common to each one of us.