Bling Bling Jin Haofan Solo Exhibition 2013.07.06 - 08.07 PREFACE WORKS SCENE TEXT	□ Fragments of Reality If the disappearance of memory represents the end of a life, the generating of it should be the sign of a new birth. Most of the earliest fragmentary sami-memories are nothing more than pieces of isolated detail images, they are as elusive as sparks flicker in dark. This kind of sami-memories which generally starts at about the age of three is defined as Infantile Amnesia by Sigmund Freud (1856-1939). Interestingly, my feeling on Jin Haofan’s work can be best described by this symptom. In his works, there are fireworks, diamonds, weapons, mushrooms, thorns, skeletons, long noses and the half-human-half-orc figures placed right in their own corners while occasionally displaced mischievously. Thus, these incoherent figures have created the images which seem absurd yet are far from inharmony. Actually, they are pretty much the same as our memories of child-time. As days passing by, what remain in our memories can hardly complete the jigsaw puzzles of childhood. Therefore, the memories can either simply cobble the disconnected fragments into a broken world or take some time to make up the unrealistic stories with ridiculous childish logic which is distinct from that of adults. Similarly, Jin usually takes the later way of storytelling to present his works which carry the marks of childhood. Like the dated fragments of memory, these paintings make the audience feel both familiar and strange. In general, this kind of easy paintings with childlike innocence is classified as Cartoon. However, I would rather use the word Manga to describe Jin’s work. Comparing to the exaggerated visual characters of cartoon, emotional storyline which can be found in the very strokes of it is emphasized by manga. Among Jin’s works, Please Tell Me Why (2012), Whisper to Me (2012), Whoops (2012) and The Book of Laughter and Forgetting (2012) are all the plays with strokes. Such style of painting is probably owned to the manga that had accompanied Jin’s growth. Jin said “I started to read manga before I could express. When I attempted to do so, I realized that myself was much more complicated than manga to be expressed. I have no idea about the descriptions of myself as well as other sophisticated folks like me”. It is both a feature of manga’s and the nature of Jin’s painting to present the most complex relations by the most straightforward means such as drawing with one of elementary factors of a picture, the line. Accordingly, there is always a sort of unspeakable comfort lasting in Jin’s seemingly uncomplicated work. Additionally, the looming sexual details in Jin’s works have implied those lovely pictures are expressing something more than childhood. For example, BUY ME (2012), Time Happily Passed by without My Knowing It (2012), Daddy (2011), To Lie in the Depth (2011) and I Will Give You all You Want (2011) are all adult versions of fairy tales whose innocence is only on the first sights. Under the cover of the sweet camouflaged color, many taboo subjects of reality are shown on the canvas in a euphemistical way. Actually, we are always looking for the exact camouflaged color to connivence ourselves that the reality is as impeccable as it may seem, regardless of the fact that we have been aware of the bleak reality in the depth of our hearts -- we barely choose the alternative to ignore it. Fortunately, I will not be bothered by this paradox when appreciating Jin’s work. Because he has already made up the white lies for the sake of me by wrapping the reality within the pure colors, releasing me from the guilt of being pretentious. Born in the 1980’s, big days of Chinese economic reform, Jin believes the public awareness in his time has not progressed as much as people expected, and the conventional attitude is still the dominant tone over the controversial issues. He once said “I have been repressed my emotion for a long time, when I tried to give vent to my turmoil to the canvas, I found I was too coward to expose my filthy true self unless it was well wrapped like a present. I am neither insulting the audience nor challenging their moral standards by hiding the truth, I am merely playing my humble role in the era of pretentious conformity. I dare not do anything inappropriate”. Therefore, as one of the ordinary audiences in this pretentious world, I appreciate the good looking presents delivered by Jin with the chemistry to maintain the intactness of our common secret about the truth. So what would I find if I unpack the presents sneakily as I seize the opportunity to be alone? I thought it should be the stark reality, whereas it turns out to be the fragments of reality. It seems to be a common sense that we are knowledgeable due to the fact that we are able to learn the world freely through the omniscient internet. Actually, those incoherence fragments of information which are out of their contexts offer us nothing more than the shallow surfaces. They can be impossibly assembled into the overall comprehension of the real world. What we have been asked to do is to accept and forget quickly in order to make rooms for the upcoming rounds of information. There is no time for us to analyze and absorb the ever updating information. The poetry written by Samuel Taylor Caleridge (1772-1834) in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner can be the most appropriate depiction of the embarrassing time of information boom and context deficiency: “Water, water, everywhere, And all the boards did shrink; Water, water everywhere, Nor any drop to drink”. In this background, the young artists do not have as much passion as their predecessors did on sketching the real world. Instead, they tend to create their own works with second-hand resources from the informative high way. When it came to this type of topic, Jin did not show anything apathetic or dislike. On the contrary, he took the selection of One Hundred Years of Solitude which depicts the first impression on ice of José Arcadio Buendía’s as metaphor for his curiosity and fear on the world he learned from internet, “I still have the mixed feeling of surprise, instability and confusion which originally showed in my early attempts to the exploration of the world, regardless of the current information explosion that enables me to be aware of everything in everywhere. I have learned a lot about other individuals and their stories from the secondary resources, as a result, they seem no longer unfamiliar to me although I have never had the chances to contact them directly. With a little more help of my imagination, they became vivid and alive. In order to cover the feeling of surprise, instability and confusion which might indicate the ignorance of mine, I have tried hard to pretend that I had known the ‘ice’ for long in this way”. People are getting used to the attention-grabbing and ever-changing news. Specifically, we use the phrases such as “my home page” and “new messages” to connect the pieces of news which are mutually exclusive or even exclusive to ourselves, resulting to the superficial links among them and between us. Similarly, Jin tries to piece out the bizarre world from the accumulating stories in his mind. Therefore, his works always carry the features of fancy and nostalgia at the same time, such as At this Moment (2013), Shine on Me (2013), Bling Bling (2012), Take One (2012) and A Long Way in Afterlife (2012). The innovative ideas are probably from his initial curiosity to the unknown world which have been encouraged and brought up with the diverse personalities and the background stories of the quirky characters in his works. Apart from the plot of the narration, I believe Jin also attempts to explore the methodology of presentation. It can be best illustrated with the obvious hand-draw nature in most of his works. The gray of pencil marks and the blue of ballpoint pen lines can be easily found in the works of his latest exhibition Bling Bling. Both of the colors take us straightforward back to the school days when we scribbled on the textbooks with wondering minds in classes. HOUSE FULL (2013), Endless (2013), Lost (2013) and The Land in Mind (2012) are all the portrayals of this kind of states. “The Land in Mind (2012) was actually inspired by the random circles that I scribbled during the process of composition. Feeling the subtle rubbing between the pen and the paper, I became peaceful and comfortable. Thus, the current of inspiration emerged and leaded to my following paintings. Later on, I figured out it was a good idea to paint the circles on the canvas. By eliminating the limitations of scenes and characters, I attempted to create a land where my audience could resonate to my emotion directly”. Comparing to his previous works which are relatively busier, Jin’s latest works are more tranquil and tender. High contrast of colors, even his classic half-human-half-orc characters as well are missing in many of his new works, what remain in the canvas are the plain strokes which reach into the audiences ' inner depths through the vibrational energy of art for a state of harmony. Indeed, the way he handles the contrast is closer to the real world. Like the clam before the storm, contrasts always tend to hind in a veil of lull before they break out. On the other hand, the slightly clumsy plain of Jin’s works is precisely what brings out their hand-draw nature. For instance, when the computer-generated animations are quite popular currently, Jin insists on the traditional way of hand-drawing to create his animation works frame by frame. Besides impressed by his “waste of time”, I cannot help to smile while watching his works, for his sincere in the process of creating which has reflected in the very stroke of his paint. In the fast-food era, it is really a rare enjoyment for both the audience and the artist to appreciate the fruit of manual labor in the artworks. The Russian writer Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977) once wrote in Speak, Memory, “I see the awakening of consciousness as a series of spaced flashes, with the intervals between them gradually diminishing until bright blocks of perception are formed, affording memory and a slippery hold”. Presumably, it is the similar way of Jin’s composition of art. Picking up a handful of the bling fragments of reality, with a worn out pencil, he diminished the intervals among them by heart. Imaginative and talent as he may be, Jin is not capable enough of making up a reasonable logy to connect the countless fragments of this messy world, leaving pieces of quirky works in front of us. Well, just be them so, we will get used to them, in the same way that we have always been to staying within this familiar and strange world.

Bling Bling
Jin Haofan Solo Exhibition
2013.07.06 - 08.07

□ Fragments of Reality

If the disappearance of memory represents the end of a life, the generating of it should be the sign of a new birth. Most of the earliest fragmentary sami-memories are nothing more than pieces of isolated detail images, they are as elusive as sparks flicker in dark. This kind of sami-memories which generally starts at about the age of three is defined as Infantile Amnesia by Sigmund Freud (1856-1939). Interestingly, my feeling on Jin Haofan’s work can be best described by this symptom. In his works, there are fireworks, diamonds, weapons, mushrooms, thorns, skeletons, long noses and the half-human-half-orc figures placed right in their own corners while occasionally displaced mischievously. Thus, these incoherent figures have created the images which seem absurd yet are far from inharmony. Actually, they are pretty much the same as our memories of child-time. As days passing by, what remain in our memories can hardly complete the jigsaw puzzles of childhood. Therefore, the memories can either simply cobble the disconnected fragments into a broken world or take some time to make up the unrealistic stories with ridiculous childish logic which is distinct from that of adults. Similarly, Jin usually takes the later way of storytelling to present his works which carry the marks of childhood. Like the dated fragments of memory, these paintings make the audience feel both familiar and strange.

In general, this kind of easy paintings with childlike innocence is classified as Cartoon. However, I would rather use the word Manga to describe Jin’s work. Comparing to the exaggerated visual characters of cartoon, emotional storyline which can be found in the very strokes of it is emphasized by manga. Among Jin’s works, Please Tell Me Why (2012), Whisper to Me (2012), Whoops (2012) and The Book of Laughter and Forgetting (2012) are all the plays with strokes. Such style of painting is probably owned to the manga that had accompanied Jin’s growth. Jin said “I started to read manga before I could express. When I attempted to do so, I realized that myself was much more complicated than manga to be expressed. I have no idea about the descriptions of myself as well as other sophisticated folks like me”. It is both a feature of manga’s and the nature of Jin’s painting to present the most complex relations by the most straightforward means such as drawing with one of elementary factors of a picture, the line. Accordingly, there is always a sort of unspeakable comfort lasting in Jin’s seemingly uncomplicated work.

Additionally, the looming sexual details in Jin’s works have implied those lovely pictures are expressing something more than childhood. For example, BUY ME (2012), Time Happily Passed by without My Knowing It (2012), Daddy (2011), To Lie in the Depth (2011) and I Will Give You all You Want (2011) are all adult versions of fairy tales whose innocence is only on the first sights. Under the cover of the sweet camouflaged color, many taboo subjects of reality are shown on the canvas in a euphemistical way. Actually, we are always looking for the exact camouflaged color to connivence ourselves that the reality is as impeccable as it may seem, regardless of the fact that we have been aware of the bleak reality in the depth of our hearts -- we barely choose the alternative to ignore it. Fortunately, I will not be bothered by this paradox when appreciating Jin’s work. Because he has already made up the white lies for the sake of me by wrapping the reality within the pure colors, releasing me from the guilt of being pretentious. Born in the 1980’s, big days of Chinese economic reform, Jin believes the public awareness in his time has not progressed as much as people expected, and the conventional attitude is still the dominant tone over the controversial issues. He once said “I have been repressed my emotion for a long time, when I tried to give vent to my turmoil to the canvas, I found I was too coward to expose my filthy true self unless it was well wrapped like a present. I am neither insulting the audience nor challenging their moral standards by hiding the truth, I am merely playing my humble role in the era of pretentious conformity. I dare not do anything inappropriate”. Therefore, as one of the ordinary audiences in this pretentious world, I appreciate the good looking presents delivered by Jin with the chemistry to maintain the intactness of our common secret about the truth.

So what would I find if I unpack the presents sneakily as I seize the opportunity to be alone? I thought it should be the stark reality, whereas it turns out to be the fragments of reality. It seems to be a common sense that we are knowledgeable due to the fact that we are able to learn the world freely through the omniscient internet. Actually, those incoherence fragments of information which are out of their contexts offer us nothing more than the shallow surfaces. They can be impossibly assembled into the overall comprehension of the real world. What we have been asked to do is to accept and forget quickly in order to make rooms for the upcoming rounds of information. There is no time for us to analyze and absorb the ever updating information. The poetry written by Samuel Taylor Caleridge (1772-1834) in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner can be the most appropriate depiction of the embarrassing time of information boom and context deficiency:

“Water, water, everywhere,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water everywhere,
Nor any drop to drink”.

In this background, the young artists do not have as much passion as their predecessors did on sketching the real world. Instead, they tend to create their own works with second-hand resources from the informative high way. When it came to this type of topic, Jin did not show anything apathetic or dislike. On the contrary, he took the selection of One Hundred Years of Solitude which depicts the first impression on ice of José Arcadio Buendía’s as metaphor for his curiosity and fear on the world he learned from internet, “I still have the mixed feeling of surprise, instability and confusion which originally showed in my early attempts to the exploration of the world, regardless of the current information explosion that enables me to be aware of everything in everywhere. I have learned a lot about other individuals and their stories from the secondary resources, as a result, they seem no longer unfamiliar to me although I have never had the chances to contact them directly. With a little more help of my imagination, they became vivid and alive. In order to cover the feeling of surprise, instability and confusion which might indicate the ignorance of mine, I have tried hard to pretend that I had known the ‘ice’ for long in this way”. People are getting used to the attention-grabbing and ever-changing news. Specifically, we use the phrases such as “my home page” and “new messages” to connect the pieces of news which are mutually exclusive or even exclusive to ourselves, resulting to the superficial links among them and between us. Similarly, Jin tries to piece out the bizarre world from the accumulating stories in his mind. Therefore, his works always carry the features of fancy and nostalgia at the same time, such as At this Moment (2013), Shine on Me (2013), Bling Bling (2012), Take One (2012) and A Long Way in Afterlife (2012). The innovative ideas are probably from his initial curiosity to the unknown world which have been encouraged and brought up with the diverse personalities and the background stories of the quirky characters in his works.

Apart from the plot of the narration, I believe Jin also attempts to explore the methodology of presentation. It can be best illustrated with the obvious hand-draw nature in most of his works. The gray of pencil marks and the blue of ballpoint pen lines can be easily found in the works of his latest exhibition Bling Bling. Both of the colors take us straightforward back to the school days when we scribbled on the textbooks with wondering minds in classes. HOUSE FULL (2013), Endless (2013), Lost (2013) and The Land in Mind (2012) are all the portrayals of this kind of states. “The Land in Mind (2012) was actually inspired by the random circles that I scribbled during the process of composition. Feeling the subtle rubbing between the pen and the paper, I became peaceful and comfortable. Thus, the current of inspiration emerged and leaded to my following paintings. Later on, I figured out it was a good idea to paint the circles on the canvas. By eliminating the limitations of scenes and characters, I attempted to create a land where my audience could resonate to my emotion directly”. Comparing to his previous works which are relatively busier, Jin’s latest works are more tranquil and tender. High contrast of colors, even his classic half-human-half-orc characters as well are missing in many of his new works, what remain in the canvas are the plain strokes which reach into the audiences ' inner depths through the vibrational energy of art for a state of harmony. Indeed, the way he handles the contrast is closer to the real world. Like the clam before the storm, contrasts always tend to hind in a veil of lull before they break out. On the other hand, the slightly clumsy plain of Jin’s works is precisely what brings out their hand-draw nature. For instance, when the computer-generated animations are quite popular currently, Jin insists on the traditional way of hand-drawing to create his animation works frame by frame. Besides impressed by his “waste of time”, I cannot help to smile while watching his works, for his sincere in the process of creating which has reflected in the very stroke of his paint. In the fast-food era, it is really a rare enjoyment for both the audience and the artist to appreciate the fruit of manual labor in the artworks.

The Russian writer Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977) once wrote in Speak, Memory, “I see the awakening of consciousness as a series of spaced flashes, with the intervals between them gradually diminishing until bright blocks of perception are formed, affording memory and a slippery hold”. Presumably, it is the similar way of Jin’s composition of art. Picking up a handful of the bling fragments of reality, with a worn out pencil, he diminished the intervals among them by heart. Imaginative and talent as he may be, Jin is not capable enough of making up a reasonable logy to connect the countless fragments of this messy world, leaving pieces of quirky works in front of us. Well, just be them so, we will get used to them, in the same way that we have always been to staying within this familiar and strange world.