Teng Kun
After the debut of exhibition “First Kiss” in Beijing, Hao Lang turned to bury himself in further creation.
As for the exhibition, the most regretful thing is failure to ask Hao Lang how the "first kiss " tasted. The outcome of tension and satisfaction of all should be mixed into a special fragrance, giving a sensitive and shy boy more harvest and growth. Over the years, when Hao Lang 's new works present in front of us with pleasantly surprise and much touching, there are still some regrets just due to missing the best time of query — what impacts the exhibition with "the first " as the key word will leave in the end.
In the previous works, the elaboration of pan fashionization, the inherent sensitivity for colors and those habits of keeping clean and delicate formed from a child help Hao Lang go smooth in the way most suitable for his creation. At that time, Hao Lang was like the little boy in his painting, free, satisfied and embracing a bright dream. As an adolescent, he was self-confident but diffident, brave but lack of courage. Looking back those days, the very carefulness has always been concealed in pictures, trying to hide vigorous hormones in the adolescence - even those surging life forces desperately break the hidden gap to flow.
Three years later, such forces are no longer blocked by hesitation in Hao Lang’s new works. After many travels and life experience, Hao Lang keeps his calmness and sincerity and even more generous to show this frankness. The colors he uses become light and bright and the emotions he expresses are free from the shackles, so he can open mind to tell a real self in the pictures.
The generation growing up along with pop culture cannot do without the aesthetics bases constructed in the deep heart. The on-scene appreciation to the works of pop artists like Andy Warhol and Lichtenstein in the travels echoes Hao Lang’s sensitive sense of color, freshening up his color image. The brightened picture implicates that there is a wider and profounder space to explore behind it and also represents with a distinctive change that the artist has left the past careful self. If the clean picture, delicate strokes and wanton colors in the previous works more or less tease and please the audience, three years later Hao Lang 's work is more like a medium of the dialogue with the audience after trying that with himself. He says goodbye to the past struggles of seeking for appreciators’ resonance and release a real self in the picture to return the identity as a creator, thus building up the confidence of a creator.
This return to the real self certainly doesn’t not mean to abandon the dialogue with appreciators. In fact, it is precisely the self indulgence that allows Hao Lang to usher in a broader acceptance. His ruminated experiences and thoughts are presented as a cryptic picture, so the picture is more abundant in layers and the emotion is more profound, all of which are perceptions shared by a generation or a kind of people. In the heart interaction, Hao Lang has found a more perfect interface with the crowd by advanced treatment of self perception.
For artists, this is surely a metamorphosis; for Hao Lang, this is a goodbye to "Youth ".
It is obvious that the change of color and pictures represents Hao Lang’s parting with the past and the expression of creation material depicts he is leaving "himself of adolescence ". Then he becomes more natural to express what he intends to present, no longer like a juvenile caring about public blames in the picture. What he expresses is not only beauty or dreams but some kind of reality, some anxiety and confusion everyone has in a certain stage of growth or a maturity in the face of a society which he starts to truly understand and dares to meet no matter how complicated it is. He who has no fear is fearless and has no desire craves for nothing. When reading Hao Lang’s new works, we seem to join a choir out of the hustle and bustle garden in the past, colorful and cool, romantic and retaining a rational knowledge of self, which provides an interactive channel for the souls of artists and us, enabling us to choose a tranquil moment to listen to the artist’s monologue in the spot light.
This is the growth that everyone has experienced, like a sudden moment of enlightenment or a new understanding of life filled with wisdom; after all life isn 't a stage for performances but should be loyal to our own experience; it is full of pains, struggles and splits; it gives you sufferings from physical changes in adolescence but also seemingly helps reach the climax of the future. That is infinite affection and a battle between youth and growth.
Goodbye youth, goodbye growth.