I have never been to Lishui, and I don 't know how this Green Valley of Zhejiang, which was called "Chuzhou " in ancient time, looks like, and I certainly can’t figure out, whether Lishui was like they described on the internet- "water surrounds the village, green hills oblique outside the walls ". But for Wang Yuanyuan, who was born in 1986 and growing up at Lishui, I think in this land of Jiangnan, where is famous for its ancient Confucian scholars, the humanistic temperament is learned, refined and composed.
Based on such background, let’s try to understand Wang Yuanyuan.
In older opinion, Wang Yuanyuan was born in a middle-class family of intellectuals, his family structure is the most traditional Chinese family in the 1980s-a harmonious and rigorous nuclear family, his father is the former vice chairman of Lishui Artist Association, his mother is a people 's teacher. During Wang’s narration, I outlined such an picture without authorization: elegant and knowledgeable father, dutiful, modest and rigorous mother, plus small Wang Yuanyuan, it’s a little bit like Mr Zhang Xiaogang 's "Bloodline: Big Family " Series. Naturally it is not accurate, but suddenly I understand: in such a family and growth environment, Wang learned painting since his childhood, then he studied at the affiliated high school of the academy, smoothly passed the entrance exam of academy of fine arts and studied bachelor degree, then studied for master 's degree, now he is planning to study for a doctor’s degree, how undoubtedly logical this growth path is.
During the conversation, he was behaving very frankly for his own growing environment and the experience of walking onto the road of painting, it’s not ideal or persistence, but the hobby and habits since his childhood finally accumulate to be the sense of achievement in life and work. He says that his idea behaviour and conception are rather traditional, he is never a feral kid since he was a little boy, he is rather obedient and basically never worried by parents. The relationship between his parents also influences him deeply in family values. So much so that the marriage after graduation, the role transformation from a son to a husband, and now to a father, for Wang Yuanyuan it is actually well-reasoned. It seems that everything is accomplished step by step in his life, and there is no deliberate plan and no twists and turns in which he has pursued but failed. "As the saying goes: the front yard business can keep on running only the backyard is stable. The stability of family is a very important factor for me, so I am very grateful to my wife, she keeps all the family things in good order, so that I can paint without distractions, and make money for my family ".
I am amazed that Wang Yuanyuan 's road "go as he wishes ", he said with a smile, "I’m indeed quite lucky. "
I certainly understand that not all the people have to choose an idle way before they can be refined by themselves, and not all the people have a prodigal heart of "the world is so big, I 'm going to take a look around "; There are a lot of people choosing to get happiness from in the daily necessities of a small and easy family life, there is also a kind of people who are always struggling with themselves in the secular gentleness, and also there are people who seek themselves in real life stability. The example of the former kind is Yan Zhu, Liu Maoqing, the example for the latter one such as Yan Shu.
Wang yuanyuan himself certainly belongs to the latter kind. So in the two years since he married, he placed more houses in his paintings, thus there is "firework "; So he said Earthly Habitation is humanity and no sentiment.
"What we can do is just returning to innocence after the long journey. " I use this sentence of Mu Xin as the mood to watch the "scenery " of Wang Yuanyuan in the keynote of growth experience.
For a person who started painting since his childhood and abandoned the object to outline and express after the third grade, accumulation is more important than imagination, not only technically, but also visually. So when experience and memory fades away, visual memory becomes more prominent. This is the same as the ancient painting of the ancient people, they learned from the nature while they crossed mountains and rivers, drew the landscape in their mind. So in the paintings of Wang Yuanyuan, there is the sign of late suprematism of Malevich, and also traces of Kandinsky 's abstract expression; There is a vague tone of Ma Yuan’s "Late Returning from Spring Outing ", and also a slight Ando Hiroshige’s touch. It is the meterialization blended with visual selection, also the imagery creating result of visual experience accumulation shaping in the process of painting.
If conduct a subjective visual classification on the "imagery creating " since "Mirage of the Mist ", it is not difficult to categorize the following contents： " scenery with houses ", "the composition of points, lines, surfaces - scenery ", "scenery under visual segmentation ", "garden landscaping ", "colorful pines ", "house of cards. Here, I put "folding space ", "forest " and "houses " aside intentionally, and use them as lateral reference system, only because relative to "mirage of the mist " and "worldly houses " series in 2015, the creations in 2014 apparently appear to be dissociative and uncertain. There is too much to present however nothing is presented. But viewing from the earliest works I can search at present - "forest " and "houses ", he gradually finds out the main foucus points from a space with many contents, and tries to clearly visualize them, and to link them in a certain way.
These focus points include: trees, houses, color block composition, people/animals. So since 2015, the houses and trees series has become one of the three important contents of Wang Yuanyuan 's works; the second is the visual segmentation scenery with the sense of composition; the last is the recent "pines " with Chinese landscaping and gardening flavor. The formation no matter which series, you can find the corresponding focus point. And so far, the most important of the three parts is the houses and trees.
The psychoanalytic psychology of Sigmund Freud deems that "trees " in deep meaning refer to the deepest state of mind and emotion; The house means family and self; Human &animals refer to social relationship, and the conflict of color blocks is the representation generated by emotion. Quite coincidentally, the stability and quantitative change of the houses &woods series has been concentrated from 2015 to today, and in early 2015, Wang Yuanyuan got married. In 2016, houses &woods began to have more space and richer imagery creating, such as the blocks and surfaces of cutting, such as outdoor open ground or small yard, such as the added people or scenic objects; In 2017, the space of the houses becomes more specific, from the visual appearance transforms to the internal environment, such as the works about landscape gardening, and his life adjusts to another kind of tempo because of the pregnancy of his wife...
Was it really coincidence? I asked Wang Yuanyuan.
The quality of a piece of artwork, apart from the skill of the creation itself, is more about the so-called spiritual core of the work above the skill, in other words, the value system. It 's about creating a new vision or a way of watching; It is to reflect and be wary of certain universal phenomena or value system; It is a reconstruction of the cultural value system; Or to express emotions and convey some certain feelings, etc. Whether it 's transcendent or in the present, it 's not a one-sided emotional expression, it 's a combination of cognitive behaviors.
So when Wang Yuanyuan said his paintings is the creation out of thin air which abandons objects, and with no clear correspondings, to some extent this illustrates that the artist greatly magnifies the demension of cognitive construction of dimension, however the procedure of combing and associating is not yet complete. This is a good thing, from complexity to clarity, it is an experience of long journey and even crossing over mountains and mountains. The unreasonable, uncertain, or change during this period is easy to be more authentic and human.
Yu Ting = Yu, Wang Yuanyuan = Wang
Yu: Can you tell me something about your hometown Lishui?
Wang: Lishui is quite close to Hangzhou, just 270 kilometers south of Hangzhou. In my memory, Lishui has always been a scenic place surrounded by beautiful forests, after all, it has the name of "Green Valley of Zhejiang " since ancient time. But since it is a small town, the cultural features and the pace of life there is naturally in an leisurely state, and not much of anger. Perhaps because there is no congestion of traffic, there is no common social pressure of big cities and severe survival competition, and people there are also very kind. In this idle state, the ability to be self-sufficient makes people happy and satisfied.
Yu: What is the most intuitive influence for you, growing up in such an introverted, leisurely town?
Wang: The impact of the local environment on everyone is inevitable, deeply or shallowly. Speaking about the most intuitive influence to me, I think it is character. Since I was small, I was not a person who was perverse and wanting to be noticed, no matter it was in front of the elder relatives and friends as a kid, or later in college, I was not the kind of person who stood out, or owned light wherever I go. Without the attention, I was always free instead. To learn what I want to do freely, to do what I wanted to do, no matter good or bad, it’s my own business, and I could always find my own interest and sense of accomplishment. Perhaps because of this, during so many years of growth, I have been holding an peaceful attitude about life, happiness consists in contentment after efforts, if any struggling that is with myself. It 's a rather traditional and resigned character.
Yu: So far, including exam, love, marriage, all naturally happens?
Wang: I 'm quite lucky. Starting from my childhood, I went to school and learned painting, then I took exams to be admitted by the affiliated school then college then the graduate school, after that I fell in love with my wife until I got married, it was always going smoothly for me. Perhaps because I don 't worry too much about gain and loss, when it 's time to do something I would do it, it 's time to make effort I would make effort, when it 's time to complete something I would complete. I feel that in this way, I can be able to balance a lot of things in a good way.
Yu: Why you choose to paint woods? Does the woods or scenery means anything particularly to you?
Wang: I can’t say if there is any special meaning. For me, a big reason that I paint trees and scenery, is because my ability to master the lines is fairly better, and I like to start from the perspective of the lines and to express, this may be related to the accumulated experience and feeling after many years of painting. Some people might be seek breakthrough after giving up existing experience, I tend to propel on the basis of the existing experience, break through the bottleneck and achieve breakthrough. The woods is more difficult in the expression: how to draw the longitudinal and strewn quality, and the different posture in different environments, it’s as affluent as human. I have pondered for a long time. Of course, also because I 've always thought woods is a very mysterious and interesting existence, in the large jungle, gleamingly emerges a corner of house or village, it’s very accidental but surprised mood. Maybe in my subconscious mind, the woods are something closer to the spiritual world or emotional world. Then in a place like this, there is house, smokes, fireworks, it feels like there will be some people, living a life there.
Yu: When did you start the series of scenery?
Wang: It’s fairly late, after graduate school, roughly from 2014 to 2015. Before that, I drew more about figures. In fact, during the years from the affiliated school to graduate school, I went through many detours in painting. It has something to do with the quality and quantity of what a person has seen and his field of vision. Although I stepped into the academy system very early, but in the affiliated high school it was more about groundwork, there were academic stuff, what I learned was more about solid ability of managing the image, for mind opening and western modern art genres such things, my understanding was very limited, almost until admission to the academy I began to come into contact with such things gradually. At that time I really liked Eric Fischl, appreciated that he used his technique of figurative expressionism to build the picture effect with a bit weird sense. So I was unconsciously mimicking fisher 's painting for a while. Later, I was obsessed with the German Leipzig School, I liked piece together a lot of pictures to form an image. A great many people who study art should have experienced this process-mimicking a lot, trying all kinds of styles, hoping to find a suitable way for their own expression. Maybe I fumble rather slowly, using several years I started to pulled out myself from these imitations, began to rule my own language of expression system, slowly pulled off some content, gradually remained the trees and scenery.
Yu: A combination of spirit and reality.
Wang: Yes, this is what I really want to realize in the picture, and also I am trying to look for the intersection boundary between the Utopia of art above the spirit and the reality underlying the earthly smoke. It 's like you can 't only know about A Dream of Red Mansions, but also you have to take a look of The Golden Lotus. Spiritual pursuits are indispensable, but life is also necessary. Pureness on the spiritual level, and to be able to hold on to the fireworks of the present, that’s the way to live up a life.
Yu: Is this the reason why the title of this solo exhibition called Earthly Fireworks?
Wang: What if it’s because I think "Earthly Fireworks " sounds good. I think a the fuzziness of a theme is rather important, it can more subjectively highlights the "sense " of the visual emotions - such as "Earthly Fireworks ", don’t you feel the image of a firework blooming in the sky. In the concept of many people, perhaps the world and the fireworks are considered to be short-lived. But the directionality of words is never singular. Thinking deeper, from a different angle, maybe it’s not sentimental at all. For me, houses, and smokes, means there are people, hence humanity, and life. Earthly Fireworks, is the milk of human kindness, and no sentiment.
