Fu Meijun
The past progressive construction indicates an action or a state that was ongoing at the past time. I take this as the events that have been caused by a series of actions in the past „may never end“. Motion is absolute while stagnation is relative.
Obviously, a two-dimensional painting hanging on the white wall appears to be so still that some „elements“ must stand in need if someone want it to move. The following sections of seven paintings will illustrate what I am talking about.
„Viscousness“ describes the process by which two scrub brushes are used to agitate the fibre-reinforced plastic. When the liquid was solidified and the brush was shaped, the head and the holder of the brush were separated because of the imbalance of stirring speed and drying time and the continued motion. A specific action is fixed. Like what showed in the monitor, the continuous motion stopped while never stop to remind us what will happen next. Like the flowing mountain stream in „Folded Landscape“ stopped as is folded like a cloth. Like the purple „dead water“ in „Congealed Landscape“ seemed to flow without gravity in a tilted pond.
Deconstruction is a great way to show what time is. Man can manipulate or modify it at speed, order, rhythm or length. I tried to escape the linear time to present some typical points. I used the spring rain, the summer lotus, the autumn grass and the winter snow as different points in time to compose the paintings „Growing and Dying“ and „Falling and Covering“. The rain is pouring down from the eaves due to gravity. The snow is covering and melting on the tiles because of the difference in temperature. The vibrant lotus leaf and the withered yellow grass on the edge of the container are showing the process of growing and dying. I want to make the invisible visible, to show the process by changing the time and by doubling the antonymous scenes .
„116 Page“ is composed of a total of 116 color layers. Layer upon layer, thickness formed in a certain period of time. The slow process makes me feel like I 'm reading. Each layer is like a page of a book, and the process of paging tells the disappearance of the time. Time slowed here as has been modified. When it comes to obscure part, the passage of understanding will be blocked by a book without words like in „Reading Disorder“.
In „Mount Fuji Seen Through The Flume“ from Katsushika Hokusai, the flume pole, the pull rope and the Mount Fuji have formed an overlap of edges. As audience, we don 't care too much about the reasonableness of the phenomenon, instead, we take this as a most beautiful appearance of Mt. Fuji. Man like the symmetrical, parallel and regular objects, which show instinct of struggle against the intervention of nature. „Parallel Landscape“ is popularly composed of mountains, trees and clouds, what is easy to remind people of folk painting. Trees are paralleled or symmetrically arranged. This kind of absolute parallelism describes a precise landscape against nature. As by bundling to foster good bonsai, the arrangement of trees is more a good guide than a distorter. In „Aggregation“, all the indoor or outdoor scenes are gathering. They are not the result of exogenic action, but an illusion. Coincidence can also make sense. In the mural „Pond In A Garden“ from the tomb of Nebamun 1400 BCE - 1350 BCE Thebes, a pond been overlooked, trees on the face side and the cross profile of duck, fish and grass appear in a bird 's-eye view at the same time. In order to achieve a comfortable vision and the most ideal perspective, who cares about right and wrong.
There is always a difference between convention and deviation. In any of the typical examples, reference frames are needed to show movement. When the observer is moving, a segment will produced from its origin to its end, then we can feel a kind of thrust. David Hume describes any vision object as a neutral tool. I understand narrow-minded as position differences produce dynamic. We all know about the difference of size, weight and positions. If there is an opposing affiliation, there are two objects moving symmetrically, and sometimes gathering or separating at the same speed. In „Dislocation“, water marks in different z-coordinates erode the wall surface in the same x-coordinate. It is obviously a wrong physical phenomenon, and the mistake creates a visual mismatch in the image, the vague image. The defective table and chair are reasonably present or forcedly inset in both walls, what makes the wall on the right hand slightly tilted. The mistake here is the „error“, which is a result of enlarging the details and an earnestly longing natural perfection.
Sometimes actions are reasons. In „Strip Food No.1 & No.2“, Chopsticks are picking food similar to Crossing-the-bridge noodles in hot soup. An action suggests a happy meal. In „Vanished Volume“, the interior reveals the disappearance of the original container volume, and the interesting thing is, the open interior remains the same empty. Then, how to show the process of vanishing of the volume, when the six sides of the cube are reduced to a two-dimensional surface.
The occurrence of traces is a convincing evidence of existence. The traces on the kitchen cutting board and on the food in „Cut Trace“ indicates that the action of cut has already occurred. The object is no longer important here, what is important is the traces left in the process of painting. The „Arc Trace“ left on the windscreen by the wiper blade indicates that a circular motion is taking place. „Out of Balance“ caused by a flat tire causes the object to bent. In the picture, even a steel wire, which was stretched by a slanting force, is telling what happened.
I must then say something about the abstract images in my pictures. That does not mean that I am engaged in the abstract art creation, I prefer to understand the indistinguishable image as a pictographic representation of reality. It 's true that we cannot see real actions but only fragments in the paintings, but indeed they are the result of visual perception. I use Time and Motion to understand Event. Time measures change, change produces motion, motion constitutes event. From this point of view, I 'm trying to create an event in a two-dimensional picture. Of course the figures are not graphic or narrative functional, and my emphasis in the picture is not the event but the fragment. Some people believe that Georges Seurat is greater than Paul Cézanne, because he transforms the emotional brushwork into a mechanical point, and so to make man the machine who controls the brush. I prefer to believe, as a bystander, that in the slow mechanical manipulation the object here and now seems more closer to its „nature“.
Indeed, these objects seem like nouns, but I hope it has the property of the verb, not like adjectives, not a simple definition, and definitely not like interjections. If I have to draw a dog, I will draw a rebellious biting Tibetan mastiff, but not the cute chihuahua or the sweet and sentimental akita dog. I know that the understanding of the images will be distracted by my prompt tone. Description can will arouse the connection between the pictures and specific scenes. In fact, I do not want to cram all the imaginary space. I talk a lot just want to say what I see, what I think, and what I 'm going to do.
Back to the reality, being a „professional“ artist after graduation made it reasonable for me to stay at home. It was too easy to become an artist, one solo exhibition produced me. But when I became confident and carefree, my paintings became insincere and stagnant. So I failed, lost and was afraid and disappointed in 2016. It was so hard to be an artist. People in Yunnan usually say, that „making money " is making a kind of „bitter money“, to „work“ is to work on the „road of survive“. In their eyes, making money and doing a job are both suffering and surviving in life. I think I had better to be an artist with this „hard“ attitude, to dream but not be a daydreamer. Think about it, no art can escape from life, buying food can be harder than drawing a picture.
