-From Caixin. com
"I am always in an uncertain state, which changes with time. In such an uncertain and even foggy life, I found a more suitable way to express my painting. " Sun Yao described himself like this.
Under the huge background of time, the young painter Sun Yao started from scratch and poured out his imaginary scenery on the canvas. For him, painting can't be realized by hand, and works of art need more images from his inner consciousness with his mind.
The theme of Sun Yao's creation is mostly to describe the confrontation between man and the outside world-"People are more and more accustomed to putting themselves before anything. The power of reason seems to give us enough confidence to bring some order to the world, but my recent works want to torture this confidence." He explained his creative motivation.
On 20 10, I started to create the jungle series. Light and shadow, light and darkness, make the "jungle" series look half like Chinese painting and half like western abstract painting. In this group of works, Sun Yao combines the traditional landscape of China with portraits of people's faces, and shows the artist's ability to control the media with black and white monochrome paintings.
In The Jungle, Sun Yao deliberately regained his romantic artistic feelings, even immersed in history, dating back to the Renaissance in Northern Europe. At that time, the artists of the Nordic Renaissance alienated the expression of specific people and things, but showed unusual interest in the scenery. They pay more attention to the symbolic meaning of the ultimate fate of people and the world contained in natural things.
"Artists in this period prefer to depict infinite wilderness, vast forests and natural scenes that change in the morning and evening in their works, and bury the events in the world in the natural calendar in the picture. The profound influence of Gothic art makes artists project their understanding and experience of religion on many natural objects. " Sun Yao said in his exposition of The Jungle. Centuries apart, Sun Yao was moved by the artist's profound insight and experience of the primitive energy contained in nature. "I want to use the artist's understanding of the world at that time to re-examine the relationship between the present self and the world as subjectivity."
Two years, 23 paintings, the jungle is coming to an end. It confides to the viewer silently: even under the influence of the outside world, there is still a pure psychological space in our hearts, which is nothing more than covered by dense forests. As long as the leaves are separated, everything will be scattered.
Even with the same motif, these 23 works have undergone great changes in form. In the past two years, Sun Yao has been reflecting on the complex relationship between the two concepts "body and nature" and "image and reality" which have troubled him for a long time. There is usually a small human figure in the hidden place of the early jungle. But four or five years later, Sun Yao found the meaning of this expression too clear. As a result, he gradually weakened the human body, until finally only an empty landscape was left. Moreover, the features of human faces in the painting are gradually dispersed, from the initial clear form to the vague and difficult to argue.
Every theme expressed by Sun Yao is the inheritance and development of the previous theme.
If Jungle is a salvage of the interdependence between man and nature, then the creative inspiration of River Flowing, which started on 20 1 1, comes directly from people's lamentation about the invasion of nature.
As the name of this series, The Flowing River comes from the film A River Crossing It, A River Crossing It, which was filmed by Hollywood director robert redford in the late 1990s. This series shows the occupied land and the scenery after human natural excavation in a unique style. Sun Yao used the expression of collision, showing grandeur and fear at the same time. "Although we are sorry and disappointed by these devastating attacks on nature, we will also be attracted by images showing destruction and disaster," he said. "When we see the strange beauty of this destroyed nature, we will feel sorry and pity."
Some artists' creations point to social energy, while others only focus on beauty. Sun Yao didn't choose between the two, which is consistent with his own state, and his works are in a state of chaos. "What I care about is the relationship between the work and the viewer." For him, after a work is created, the relationship between the creator and the viewer changes immediately, and the creator's thinking is brought into a new context for a broader discussion. This is the most important thing, and the theme, plot and form should all take a back seat.
Sun Yao's creation is deeply branded with the times. As a post-1970s generation, Sun Yao's most explosive growth was in the prelude of China's social materialism in the 1990s. Some art critics believe that "at that time, under the stimulation of material desires, China people's various desires began to recover and were released without scruple." As a response to the high pressure of the body since the founding of the People's Republic of China, the body has become the starting point of everything, and various feelings about the body have risen to the highest standard of personal judgment and experience. Sun Yao's paintings are based on the climate of this era, starting from his own personal experience of the surrounding environment, emphasizing the bearing role of the body on consciousness, thoughts and desires. The body is neither the subject of observing the outside world nor the observed object, but the whole self. "
For more than ten years, Sun Yao has been exploring the relationship between human body and external nature. In his understanding, the human body is a complete nature, and he uses the body to symbolize the broader nature.
He once held an exhibition called "self-topography" for one of his people. This exhibition not only explores the relationship between self and place, but also explores the relationship between individuals and collectives and their separation from their environment. Through "self-topography", he once again emphasized that nature is by no means nature.
Northern lights on canvas
-From the Norwegian Consulate
20 10 On June 26th, the unveiling ceremony of the oil painting Aurora Trail was held in Norway Pavilion. As one of the cooperative projects of the Norwegian Organizing Committee for the World Expo, the Norwegian Consulate General in Shanghai and three artists from China, Sun Yao used a brush to show the magnificent scenery of the extreme night in northern Norway.
Chasing the northern lights
Last year1February, China artists ma qiusha and Qiu visited northern Norway for a week, hoping to get inspiration from Norwegian nature. The troupe experienced such extraordinary experiences as dog sledding and chasing the Northern Lights at MINUS 40 degrees Celsius, and put the feelings of the journey into later creation.
"Aurora Trail", the first painting in this series, was unveiled at the Norwegian Pavilion. First of all, Mr. Halvard Ingebrigtsen, Deputy Minister of Trade and Industry of Norway, delivered a speech. Mr. NorHeping, Consul General of Norway in Shanghai, and the artist himself attended the exhibition. Einar Larsen also played a short piece of music with Norwegian folk violin to add fun. The oil painting was well received by the guests present. "This painting complements the Norwegian Pavilion, which not only shows the natural landscape abstractly, but also conveys the information of protecting the environment," praised Mr. NoHeping.
Against the backdrop of the overall dark blue, the ethereal and quiet green aurora descended from the sky like the holy spirit and followed the shape to live in the long night. The gorgeous and persistent warm red in the corner of the picture is eroding the blue of the night indifferently, expressing the author's concern about the threat of global warming facing the Arctic.
New impression of Norway
After the World Expo, the "Aurora Trail" will be sold, and the works of ma qiusha and Qiu will be exhibited in summer and autumn this year respectively. Sun Yao is very satisfied with his trip to Norway and plans to go there again in the future. "I want to go back to Norway to find new inspiration," said Sun Yao, who is also a lecturer at Shanghai University.
Self-topography
Author: Raul Samudio
The painter Sun Yao's solo exhibition entitled "Self-topography" implies the relationship between landscape and identity. Historically, geography has been regarded as incorruptible and objective, transcending cultural boundaries. Because in a sense, we were born in culture, not in nature. However, this is a misunderstanding: not only is the region closely connected with our conscious consciousness, but under the background of globalization, any environment, whether a country or a city, can transcend its geographical boundaries through its residents, because these residents can bring some aspects of this place into the vast area of the world. For example, a Spanish wine merchant or a new york businessman all represent their respective cultures and regions in some ways, even if one is from the countryside and the other is from the city. Therefore, when they go abroad, they will attach and open this social burden. Of course, this becomes more complicated because cultures and regions are often different, not integrated. For example, under the influence of communication and computer technology (such as the Internet), regions are constantly changing.
With the appearance of globalization, different regions and cultures are getting closer and closer, and the structure of new culture is changing. Just like the post-modern self-state, it is not only certain, essential or fixed, but also fluid, changeable and open. The exhibition "self-topography" not only explores the relationship between self and place, but also explores the relationship between individuals and collectives and their separation from the environment. This exhibition tells us that nature is by no means nature through various concepts such as sublimity and self-contingency.
Sun Yao's paintings emphasize that the world we live in is intrinsically related to our psychology, just like some landscape painters. For example, Casper David Friedrich, a German romantic artist, endowed nature with a lofty feeling in his works, although he also had some metaphysical meanings. After him, the British painter J.W.M Turner had another understanding of sublimity, and they used different ways to express this feeling. Friedrich expressed sublimity as an extension and expression of transcendence, while Turner interpreted it as an extension of moral absoluteness. However, their views on the sublime can be traced back to the philosopher edmund burke. In the book "Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas about Sublime and Beauty" (1756), Burke pointed out that sublime and beauty are mutually exclusive, but they are contradictory. Burke believes that sublimity is awe of natural beauty and fear of uncontrollable violence of nature, and people in nature can only be at their mercy.
In other words, sublimity has two attributes, on the one hand, it refers to grandeur and solemnity, on the other hand, it contains fear. This feature is reflected in all terrible natural disasters. Although devastating natural disasters make us feel sorry and disappointed, we will also be attracted by images showing destruction and disasters. There are many videos on YouTube about tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, storms, earthquakes and other natural disasters, from which we can see that the human brain is both disgusted and fascinated by the terrible destructive power of nature. In the face of a large number of deaths caused by nature, the superficial and common response is to interpret it as "providence". In other words, the damage caused by the cruel violence of nature is so profound that it can only be attributed to providence. Burke argued that the reason why we don't want to see the image of disaster is not because we have a morbid psychology or are insensitive to the loss of life, but that the duality of lofty disgust and attraction is similar to human aesthetic instinct, and the understanding of beautiful things is inherent in human consciousness, which makes it difficult for us to take our eyes off the violence of nature. This is very important to understand the sublimity in Friedrich and Turner's works, and it is also the key to understand why Sun Yao's art is so fascinating.
Sun Yao's works are full of power and poetry, which to some extent benefits from his utilization of traditional landscapes and endows them with new forms. This will be obvious if Friedrich's Monk by the Sea (1808- 18 10) and Sun Yao's Dense ForestNo. 15 (20 10+00) are juxtaposed. The latter is a part of the jungle, which is generally about various interpretations of the combination of plants and human body. This work reminds people of water and land. The reason why this effect can be achieved lies in Sun Yao's handling of color and clever use of light and shade: in his works and the space of the picture, the color whirls and flows, and "explodes" like a disorderly vine pattern. He created rich paintings through rich thickness changes. Besides, Sun Yao's works are always spectacular, which also creates an atmosphere similar to that of a monk by the sea.
In Friedrich's masterpiece, a monk stood solemnly by the sea, as if lost in sacred meditation, looking at the magnificent boundless space in the distance. Monks are surrounded by the sea, just like the anthropomorphic form created by Sun Yao, which unites invisible trees, making people unable to tell which is in front and which is behind. So, which is more important, the people in the picture or the scenery? Sun Yao created an ambiguous aesthetic riddle, which endowed his works with meaning beyond vision: the effect of mental illusion endowed his works with vitality, and we seemed to see an unpredictable projection slide emerge from the abyss of unconsciousness. We are indeed looking at a painting, but we can feel something under or in the painting, which not only attracts us, but also creates some aesthetic escape. Like Sun Yao, Turner also created lofty feelings, but his works are often full of ethics, even if they are not moral.
Turner's slave ship (1840) is probably one of the most famous works of English painters. The slave traders were trapped in the rough sea and their boats capsized. But this work is not a19th century Hollywood disaster film. The content of the picture is consistent with the title of the work. Turner not only showed the capsizing caused by bad weather, but also hinted at the demise of slavery. It is not the ancient sea that destroys this system, but God's punishment for human slavery. Obviously, Sun Yao's works also describe people's situation metaphorically. He presented us with a dramatic scene, involving our correct position in the world and other problems about existence. Among them, we not only sometimes conflict with nature, but even part ways with ourselves.
Sun Yao's works, like his other works, can be regarded as a mirror, reflecting unstable human nature, or even an unbalanced state. Sun Yao emphasized this effect in many ways in form and concept, including the strong light fluctuating in the upper right corner of the work hitting the lower left corner of the picture to form a diagonal line, and at the same time creating spiral light on the outline and edge of plants. This light falls and fixes the material things, but it also spreads in all directions. Light and shadow interweave to form an ever-changing effect. In Sun Yao's wonderful works, the two are in sharp contrast, just as silence is to sound and sculpture. In Sun Yao's monochrome picture, there are many layers between dark and bright poles, which creates dialectical interaction and balance. This work, like other works in the Dense Forest series, comes from a black-and-white historical context, integrates traditional art forms, and finally forms Sun Yao's own artistic style.
Sun Yao's works remind me of another artist, Mark Tancy. Although his works are also in monochrome form, their themes are distinct. Tan Xi's picture narration is spiritual, which dispels the history of monochrome painting. In the past, monochrome painting has always been regarded as the patent of minimalism and early formalism and geometric abstraction. On the other hand, Sun Yao not only skillfully adopted this artistic rhetoric, but also traced his works back to Griselle, which is called "using gray as a monochrome painting". Gray painting is often used to copy bas-reliefs, so it is especially suitable for expressing architectural themes. Greek painters, because there is no light and shade method, mainly rely on gray painting to express the shape of tone. Since then, some outstanding painters in the Gothic period have also used the method of gray painting-source. For practical and aesthetic reasons, many artists in the history of art adopted gray painting, including Gothic artists Jean Pissere and Giotto, Renaissance artists Peter Brugell and Mantnia, and emotionalist painter and sculptor Hendrick Galzius. As we all know, gray painting is not an expert, that is to say, compared with color painting, gray painting can better reflect the artist's talent.
Sun Yao's monochrome painting shows his talent, because monochrome painting can better reflect the artist's ability to control the media. We know that light and shadow are the core of his artistic practice. Like his other works, light plays an important role in 15, which not only adds the sense of form and vitality of composition to the picture, but also enhances the emotional content of the picture. It is in this sense that Sun Yao broke away from the previous romantic artists and brought his art into a more contemporary artistic realm, and his aesthetic vocabulary was closer to anselm kiefer's boundless landscape paintings. However, Sun Yao's paintings are multifaceted. He brought these works into a more open narrative and explored the personal situation that gathered the geographical gestalt in a poetic way. His forest images are full of anthropomorphic forms. Looking at his paintings, the individual seems to have evaporated, because he injected not only the ghost of human form, but also the seamless combination of characters and scenery to release emotions. We might as well observe this experience through his other work, Dense Forest 14.
"65438 +05" shows the dense forest in a magnificent way, and this ethereal feeling is also injected into most of his works in this series. The dialectical interaction between tangible and intangible endows the works with light and heavy visual poetic characteristics. If "15" embodies the mixture of light and shade and density, center and edge in a spreading and picturesque way, then "14" adopts a simpler material form. Sun Yao has always adopted the theme of forest and fantasy. Compared with 15, the face and body in 14 can emit different * * * sounds, because the face is on the ground and the body is underground. It is in this field that Sun Yao shows rich and extensive human emotions. He adopted a variety of complex body and facial images and gave them the same cohesion. However, it seems that he can also handle this modeling in another way. For example, on the 7 th, the huge face occupies the whole picture, so plants such as bodies and trees seem to be attached to it.
This is a phantom face of the prototype: looking at this huge face, we can't help but think of Jung's psychology and prototype. The famous psychologist suggested that these archetypes came from the collective unconscious. Similarly, the shapes of "No.7" are linked together, and * * * together form eyes, nose, mouth and so on, facing the viewer in a more direct way. Although his other works also use the signifier of trees to splice faces, No.7 is the most disturbing one. Although the artist never mentioned the origin or significance of this painting form, we can guess that this huge face with other images on it is the portrait of the artist himself. This is not a portrait in the traditional sense, because this portrait is not like the artist himself, but this face occupies the whole picture and constitutes a circular motif, so it may be the artist himself and me. In this sense, Sun Yao has returned to the original point. Although other artists show lofty themes, they all show the nature outside, while Sun Yao's sublimity is internal.
Sun Yao's art seems to be a trip to our deepest heart, where we don't want to go, face or compromise with it. This is not only because of our complacency, but also because we have deviated from Socrates' idea of "knowing ourselves". However, it is not easy to know yourself, which requires great sincerity, and Sun Yao's paintings are the embodiment of his artistic sincerity. His artistic activities are not only for aesthetic reasons, but also for exploring life and philosophical issues including the essence of existence. During his pilgrimage, which he called art, he told us through these beautiful works that self is vague because we are ourselves. The more we alienate ourselves, the more alienated we become. If Sun Yao shuttles through the imaginary forest, then his works are poetic visual maps. In short, this is the self-topography.
Open the image-read Sun Yao's paintings.
Text: Duan Jun
Society contains a lot of conspiracy with excellent concealment, so that we can't see some scenery. More precisely, it prevents us from seeing some parts of the image. It is difficult to realize the desire of crossing social consciousness by hand to watch images without omission, because images are not all conveyed externally, but expressed internally in the form of mind. Sun Yao's paintings reveal the conspiracy theory of social images: what is defined as invisible in the image structure is actually visible.
In a series of works he painted from 2005 to 2007, such as Look, Face, Leap, Climax, Scenery, Sancta familia, etc., people's faces and trunks, as well as landscapes or objects that are consistent with their faces and trunk structures, are merged into absurd "mountains and people" landscapes with penetrating brushstrokes. In these metaphysical works, Sun Yao tried to simulate the brushwork effect of China's classical landscape paintings. The human facial features or trunk fluctuated with the ups and downs of the yin and yang of the body and structure, and became a strange picture like an ink landscape. In the time and space beyond experience, the painter reconsiders the complex relationship between the two concepts "body and nature" and "image and reality" that have puzzled mankind for a long time.
Due to the traditional imprisonment of Confucian culture "self-denial and courtesy", most people in China in history ignored or rejected their bodies. China people have long advocated keeping the body's desires and animal impulses to a minimum, while the body is replaced by the "heart", which is regarded as the absolute thinking center and the main organ of cognition. It was not until the introduction of modern physiology that China gradually shifted its attention from the heart and lungs to the brain. It was during Sun Yao's conscious life-11990s that China's social materialism gained the upper hand.
The posture of the body shows the cultural attitude of the body in Sun Yao's paintings, which is both social and personal. Complex social rules and rigid cultural taboos specify the posture of the body tangibly or invisibly. The description of tree trunks in Sun Yao's works shows a gloomy picture of little people struggling to resist. Therefore, nothing is clear enough in Sun Yao's pictures. The only thing that is clear is that both the overall mood and the texture of language are in a strong natural storm. What the painter wants to remember is the break between man and nature. People are actually nature, not outside nature, but in nature, they can only experience each other and can't look at each other. The separation between man and nature violates both human nature and the way of nature. Sun Yao describes an inseparable scene: as a natural way of existence, people ask what obstacles and threats people are facing at present.
Scenery, face and body are merged, which is illusory and needs to be confirmed. There are both doubts and sympathy. Sun Yao integrated a series of mental states into the landscape through personification, and a benign relationship was formed between the two images. The painter completely abandoned the strict dichotomy in a rigid society. He regards "body and nature" as a pair of concepts that can be transformed into each other at any time. In the Northern Song Dynasty, Guo's "Lin Shui Xun Hua Ji" already contained: "Mountains take water as blood, vegetation as hair, smoke as gods ... water takes mountains as faces, pavilions as eyebrows, and fishing as spirits". Infiltrated in the middle of Sun Yao's picture is China's ancient naturalism, that is, the Taoist view of "harmony between man and nature". Accordingly, the painter advocates not knowing the world with the naked eye, but grasping the world with the understanding of things, so as to reach or return to reality.
1In the mid-1990s, the oil painting department of China Academy of Fine Arts began to try phenomenological painting teaching. Teaching in inquiry requires students to get rid of the shackles of inherent principles such as anatomy, perspective, light and shade, reality, proportion, structure and color. For Sun Yao, the experience of studying in China Academy of Fine Arts has influenced him to pay attention to the overall psychological feelings of his works from how to draw objects in detail, concretely and deeply.
Phenomenological painting has always been quite inclusive, and the basic methods are constantly developing. It does not require artists involved to stick to the rules, but encourages painters to discuss their different possibilities. Sun Yao inherited the phenomenological tradition and took "questioning the truth" as his responsibility, and developed some new themes and methodologies. In fact, the early Chinese Academy of Fine Arts rejected the method of creating based on mechanical factors such as photos. They think that this kind of behavior will give the picture an excessive sense of production, that is, forcing a space-time fragment frozen by mechanical means into the painter's work, which is very blunt and rude, and may also constitute an illusory relationship between subject and object: the painter is addicted to the world of "mirror pavilion" and his instinct as an artist is exhausted in it.
Although Sun Yao's works are based on photos, they don't draw photos repeatedly. What he depicts on the screen is a flowing and temporary landscape, as if painting is as unpredictable as the fate of mankind. Not only the audience, but also the painter himself is confused, and the picture needs constant confirmation, but it does not insist on the final answer and result. Sun Yao used to run pictures, and he forced the audience to regard "looking at pictures" as an activity of reading, cognition and thinking, rather than a traditional cognitive behavior. His pictures are not completely unfamiliar and abstract, and the painter tries to create some familiar scenes in them, and reminds the audience to enter the work with the title of the work. However, the fuzziness and fuzziness of images still hinder the possibility of smooth communication between the audience and the works.
Therefore, the audience must enter the venue with a sense of question and nervous speculation. Invite the audience to wander in the virtual world created by the painter, contact with reality through multiple fuzzy layers, and roam freely in the endless artistic space. This is the experimental nature of Sun Yao's paintings. He betrayed the previous cognitive clues with various unexpected image structures and illegible identities, which led us to forget the past viewing logic and retinal habits.
At present, the society advocates clarity, emphasizes order and classification, and does not allow doubts and guesses, and opposes treating related objects as mutually inclusive and subordinate fuzzy relationships, so as to facilitate governance and supervision. This only means the destruction of the possibility of life, and China's mainstream paintings also emphasize drawing clear facial expressions, so as to make it clear. However, Sun Yao's generation of young painters experienced a kind of personal incompleteness. There is nothing ready-made and nothing that has been terminated. Life and art should be in the process of constant change and generation. We can see that in Sun Yao's works, people's facial expressions are always vague. At a time when man-made "big face painting" has become the darling of the art market, it is really commendable that Sun Yao's paintings silently urge art to return to reality and heart.
The question is, how to prove the hypocrisy of society and the truth of individuals in a self-centered way? How is this generation's ego proved? Can a new generation of painters really have a "new" factor? The answer lies in new technologies, new methods and new ways of observing the world. Sun Yao first used image software to process the pictures in the computer, which is different from the manual superposition of pictures-the manual superposition method has obvious stitching traces, and powerful image processing software can seamlessly connect two or more different pictures. Sun Yao's description is not only a re-creation, but also an erasure, and it is also an opening to images. He only chooses the necessary features and surprises and leaves the unimportant ones to others.
This world has completely changed the era of image processing and modification. The modified image seems to be real, surrounding us, and gradually becomes a daily life, even a real reality. Then only by grasping the changed image can we grasp the reality as a whole. Images are already too dense, so people must choose images, and choosing images means choosing the world. The consequences of technology should be controlled by the positive possibility of technology. Sun Yao is not completely limited by technology, but technology is only an extension of his ability as an artist. With the help of special observation forms of photography, such as wide field of vision, overhead photography, negative film, etc. He made the painting look different from the past. Moreover, in the process of hand painting, he will adjust the image and painting method at any time according to the situation, so as to achieve the cooperation between technology and nature.
Unlike Richter, an expert in photo painting, Sun Yao's paintings have strong emotional characteristics, rather than being unusually calm and neutral like Richter. However, Sun Yao and richter reached an agreement on expressing the artist's inner sensitivity. The unprecedented scene described by Sun Yao is not so much his personal utopia as the psychological relationship between the world he yearns for and the real world and the cognitive world. He not only broke the closure of the single world, but also established a free passage between fantasy and reality.