Text  /  Benzoin

Looking  at  Liu  Tianlian 's  works  is  like  entering  into  a  labyrinth.  In  the  multiple  spatial  dimensions  made  by  colorful  plaids  or  patterns,  there  are  flowers  and  parrots,  water  pipes  and  goldfishes,  there  are  floral  patterns,  a  little  boy  and  a  small  train,  there  is  also  freshness,  richness  and  jamming...  Tianlian’s  works  are  beautiful,  even  with  a  strong  sense  of  fashion,  filled  with  a  variety  of  nature  lives  growing  wilfully  and  mushups  and  collisions  among  the  abstract  and  confining  urban  fashion.  She  says:  good  works  should  be  beautiful.

Liu  Tianlian  was  born  in  Chongqing,  she  moved  to  Shantou  around  six  with  her  family,  and  later  she  chose  to  study  in  Guangzhou  Academy  of  Fine  Arts  which  is  close  to  her  home.  The  decision  to  take  the  entrance  exam  for  school  of  art  was  made  in  grade  two  in  high  school,  she  had  been  learning  to  play  the  piano  following  the  advice  of  her  parents  in  the  ten  years  before  that.  To  make  this  decision,  perhaps  on  the  one  hand  she  was  subtly  influenced  by  her  mother  who  had  studied  oil  painting  in  Sichuan  Academy  of  Fine  Arts,  on  the  other  hand  she  felt  the  lack  of  talent  for  music.

The  time  she  really  began  to  learn  Chinese  painting  started  from  the  second  year  in  the  university,  this  start  is  more  than  just  late.  Talking  about  childhood  practice,  Tianlian  didn’t  take  any  advantage.  When  she  entered  the  college,  she  once  wanted  to  transfer  to  oil  painting  department,  it  was  said  because  the  Chinese  painting  classroom  was  very  depressed  in  the  six  floor  in  contrast  with  the  Oil  painting  classroom  which  was  on  the  seventh  floor  and  with  a  skylight.  But  after  wandering  among  oil  painting,  fashion  designing  and  a  variety  of  interesting  art  curriculum,  Liu  Tianlian  eventually  chose  to  study  solidly  in  Chinese  painting.The  elective  course  of  copying  the  works  of  Flower  and  Bird  in  Song  and  Yuan  Dynasty,  she  took  twice  in  her  undergraduate  period,  gradually,  she  felt  the  charm  of  Chinese  painting:   "The  ancient  people  were  very  smart  in  creation,  even  a  seemingly  normal  sector  painting  from  Song  dynasty,  could  also  blend  the  changes  of  a  plant  in  the  four  seasons  into  it,  and  then  through  which  manifests  the  beauty  and  sense  of  time. "

Using  Chinese  painting  as  the  creative  medium,  she  has  always  been  trying  to  change  people 's  cognition  of  traditional  Chinese  painting  in  her  own  way,   "What  I 'm  looking  for  is  not  only  the  senses  about  the  images,  what’s  more  important  is  the  exploration  for  new  languages  in  Chinese  painting’s  fine  brushwork,  and  how  to  make  another  step  forward  in  Chinese  Tranditional  Flowers  and  Birds  which  already  reached  the  peak  of  perfection. "  How  to  join  in  ideas  and  concepts  on  the  basis  of  aesthetics,  and  let  the  works  carry  modern  mind?  Liu  Tianlian  was  constantly  thinking  about  this  question  in  her  college  days.  And  the  efforts  made  trying  to  solve  this  problem,  will  cause  severe  conflicts  with  traditional  recognitions.  So  she  was  both  unfortunately  and  fortunately  considered  as  the  disapproved  kind  in  her  college  age.  Perhaps  right  because  of  this,  she  was  stimulated  to  run  away  from  tradition,  and  moving  further  and  further.

In  college  days,  Liu  Tianlian  met  her  husband  who  is  stick  to  the  road  of  artistic  creation,  this  was  a  turning  point  in  her  life.  In  2012,  in  order  to  get  better  development  in  art  creation,  she  followed  her  husband  who  is  engaging  in  the  conceptual  art  to  Beijing,  starting  the  North  Drifting  life.  In  this  process,  she  was  exposed  to  more  extensive  and  contemporary  art  forms,  which  enables  her  to  have  distinctive  painting  ideas.  She  has  a  bright  and  sharp  perception,  the  capture  and  utilization  of  new  things  is  like  her  brushwork  on  the  paper,  having  a  high  degree  of  precision  and  generality.  This  allows  her  images  created  with  traditional  ink  painting  techniques  to  be  juxtaposed  harmonically  with  modern  life  and  aesthetic  sense.

From  the  promotion  of  traditional   "Water  and  Pastel  Impact ",  endowing  the  more  stylish  and  modern  color  scheme  with  the  images,  to  the  structural    visual  language  blended  with  cubic  and  mirrored  relationships,  and  then  to  the  new  Jamming  Series  embedded  with  abstract  concept,  Liu  Tianlian 's  work  seem  to  have  narrative  elements,  actually  it  doesn’t  tell  any  stories.  She  pours  the  subtle  feeling  of  a  person  who  lives  in  the  modern  fashion  and  technology,  into  her  glamorous  and  calm  images.  She  is  stuck  in  tradition,  however  fleeing  from  the  tradition.


Hi  Art=  Hi    Liu  Tianlian=  Liu

Step  into  creation  without  appreciation

Hi:  Since  when  did  you  start  using  the  approach  of   "Water  and  Pastel  Impact "  on  your  works?
Liu:  I  was  making  attempts  during  my  undergraduate  days.  This  technique  of  Ren  Bonian  who  belonged  to  Southern  Fujian’s  Shanghai  School  is  very  special,  you  are  unable  to  control  the  outcome  in  this  process.  I  like  colors  since  I  was  little,  as  well  as  the  works  of  Van  Gogh,  so  I  put  those  extra  saturated  colors  in  the  technique  of   "Water  and  Pastel  Impact ".  At  that  time,  these  works  were  not  approved  by  my  teachers,  every  year  my  creative  score  was  quite  low.  The  Chinese  painting  department  in  Guangzhou  is  conventional,  all  the  teachers  couldn’t  accept  my  works.  But  I  felt  I  could  hold  on  to  this  technique.  Although  I  was  also  confusing,  what  was  Chinese  painting,  whether  my  creation  belonged  to  traditional  Chinese  painting.  In  a  very  long  period,  either  teachers  or  collectors  couldn’t  accept  it.

Hi:  In  this  situation  of  disapproval,  were  you  still  determined  to  walk  on  the  road  of  art?
Liu:  At  that  time,  I  had  not  much  of  concept,  didn 't  know  how  to  survive  after  creation,  but  still  into  it,  so  back  then  I  just  wanted  to  take  one  step  at  a  time,  at  the  worst  I  could  look  for  a  job.  Then  I  knew  my  husband,  who  became  an  occupational  artist  after  graduation,  he  gave  me  a  lot  of  advice.  Later,  I  was  very  lucky  to  have  been  enrolled  as  a  graduate  student,  winning  extra  three  years.

Hi:  In  postgraduate  days,  what  changed  in  your  creations?
Liu:  The  changes  of  my  works  are  quite  large  every  year,  possibly  have  something  to  do  with  my  personality,  there  are  requirements  in  my  subconsciousness,  I  can 't  accept  repetition.  Sometimes,  I  even  don 't  want  to  see  my  works  of  last  month  much.  This  is  also  because  of  the  influence  of  my  husband.  The  life  of  conceptual  artists  like  my  husband  is  very  hard,  although  they  can  get  the  opportunities  of  exhibitions  in  important  international  galleries,  they  are  very  difficult  to  have  incomes.  I  respect  their  daring  spirit  of  walking  ahead  of  wheels  of  time  from  the  bottom  of  my  heart.  So  l  also  hold  this  bias  in  my  creation,  longing  for  progress,  making  a  big  step  towards  contemporary  direction...

Hi:  Not  to  mention  that  you  don’t  belong  to  the  traditional  kind  in  the  beginning.
Liu:  Yes.  Since  I  was  abandoned  by  teachers  and  schoolmates  from  the  start,  why  not  make  another  big  step?  This  suddenly  reminds  me  of  a  work  for  my  graduation,  very  interesting.  We  went  to  Xishuangbanna  for  sketching  at  that  time,  I  made  a  lot  of  inscriptions  in  my  paintings  after  I  came  back,  the  contents  were  what  had  we  said  during  the  sketching,  one  of  which  is   "Citrus,  banana,  tangerine,  pear,  pineapple,  shaddock ".

Hi:  Is  it  about  fruit  stand?
Liu:  This  sentence  translating  into  cantonese  is  actually  a  dirty  slang.  Frankly  speaking,  I  didn’t  think  others  would  see  through.  The  second  morning  my  mentor  found  me  and  said:   "You  almost  can’t  graduate  because  of  these  words,  how  could  you  put  dirty  language  on  your  graduation  work? "  But  at  that  time  the  college  had  already  finished  scoring,  so  I  knew  I  would  graduate.  I  have  always  thought  that  my  mentor  had  a  lot  of  complaints  about  me,  but  I  heard  my  friends  who  stayed  in  Guangzhou  said,  in  fact,  the  teacher  didn’t  blame  me  for  that,  he  actually  praised  me  for  this  incidence,  because  he  also  tried  to  break  the  ice  in  Guangdong.

Hi:  Actually,  a  breakthrough  in  Chinese  painting  is  very  difficult.
Liu:  Currently,  a  lot  of  styles  in  New  Ink  Painting  are  actually  the  furbishing  of  all  kinds  of  ancient  paintings.  I  bought  a  set  of  complete  works  of  paintings  in  Song  Dynasty  this  year,  when  I  was  looking,  I  felt  they  were  really  hard  to  transcend,  no  matter  in  techniques  or  ideas.  A  lot  of  breakthrough  and  transcendence  even  didn 't  have  a  say  in  the  history  of
art,  but  these  ancient  artists  exert  a  subtle  influence  on  promoting  Chinese  painting.  My  graduate  thesis  was  discussing:  the  innovation  at  present  will  one  day  become  a  tradition.

Hi:  What  efforts  have  you  done  on  innovation?
Liu:  I  changed  the  traditional  color  matching  method.  Many  people  who  have  seen  my  works  thought  they  are  not  Chinese  painting,  but  in  fact  my  techniques  are  completely  the  techniques  of  Chinese  painting,  the
pigments  are  also  total  pigments  for  Chinese  painting.  The  technique  of   "Water  and  Pastel  Impact "  itself  allows  various  modes  of  combination,  each  kind  of  mineral  pigment  is  not  consistent  due  to  the  difference  of  particle  size,  so  the  clashing  effect  is  always  beyond  expectation.  That  is  why  this  approach  makes  me  very  interested.  In  addition  to  color  experiments,  the  traditional  China  painting  doesn’t  support  a  sense  of   "volume ",  but  currently  the  painting  creation  has  bigger  tolerance,  so  I  highlight  the  volume  of  objects  using  different  colors  in  the  technique  of  Mogu.

From  the  spatial  crush  about  boxes  to  the  Jamming  Series

Hi:  Your  works  have  a  very  special  sense  of  space  structure,  where  is  this  perspective  from?
Liu:  This  state  was  starting  with  painting  boxes.  The  box  has  a  lot  of  facets,  right?  Adding  different  elements  on  these  facets  will  produce  peculiar  sensory  effect.

Hi:  Why  do  you  want  to  paint  boxes?
Liu:  Because  back  when  my  mother  just  finished  the  decoration  of  our  house,  she  put  up  the  walls  of  my  bedroom  with  wallpapers  of  large  flowers,  I  was  quite  touched,  so  I  wanted  to  draw  a  picture  for  my  mother.  Hence  I  put  the  pattern  of  my  wallpaper  on  a  box,  in  which  I  drew  a  bunch  of  roses,  this  visual  language  of  box  was  deriving  from  this  moment.  I  started  to  get  interested  in  this  kind  of  visual  effect,  when  I  saw  other  similar  images  I  would  look  into  them  for  a  long  time,  I  also  studied  the  senses  of  space  built  by  other  artists,  photographers  and  architects.

Hi:  But  you  are  not  the  kind  of  person  who  would  continue  to  use  the  same  visual  language,  so  after  you  felt  enough  of  painting  boxs,  what  breakthrough  did  you  make?
Liu:  I  brought  in  mirrors  in  my  images,  which  would  reflect  another  space  from  the  original  one.

Hi:  To  a  certain  extent,  this  will  produce  an  implication  of  abstract.
Liu:  Later,  the  Jamming  Series  came  out.  In  this  series,  I  really  blended  in  some  abstract  language.  Currently  there  are  many  artists  painting  abstract,  but  how  to  start,  I  think  it  should  be  come  down  in  a  continuous  line  with  my  past  works.

Hi:  At  this  point,  how  do  you  think  about  the  recent  popularity  of
abstract  painting?
Liu:  I  think  it’s  a  trend.  History  of  art  cycles  just  like  fashion,  different  concepts  will  loop  over  and  over  again,  the  prevalence  of  each  trend  would      make  breakthrough  on  the  basis  of  the  past,  a  cycle  might  need  ten  or  twenty  years  in  the  past,  now  it’s  much  faster,  a  cycle  will  turn  round  every  five  or  ten  years.  I  am  very  concerned  about  fashion,  it  falls  into  aesthetic  category.  Similarly,  because  I  also  collect  artworks,  so  I  will  also  focus  on  the  trend  in  art  market.  In  this  way,  I  begin  to  appreciate  abstract  works,  as  well  as  conceptual  art.

Join  in  conceptions  on  the  basis  of  aesthetics

Hi:  Seems  you  didn’t  try  to  use  other  media  except  painting  because  of  your  preference  to  the  conceptual  art?
Liu:  I  had  thought  about  it  before,  but  didn’t  put  it  into  practice.  I  had  also  thought  to  make  an  installation  before,  but  even  so  there  were  certainly  some  elements  of  painting.  I  wouldn’t  completely  abandon  painting,  because  painting  is  the  eternal  media  for  me.  I  appreciate  the  works  made  by  mix  media,  but  also  appreciate  the  concept  art,  but  if  it  is  my  own  creation,  painting  is  the  technique  I  would  never  abandon.  The  things  a  person  can  do  and  want  to  do  are  very  limited,  you  need  to  stick  to  your  own  path,  can’t  just  catch  up  the  trend.

Hi:  To  express  contemporary  effectively  using  the  language  of  Chinese  painting,  is  supposed  to  be  a  very  difficult  thing.
Liu:  It  is  hard  to  create  good  contemporary  artworks.  My  husband  has  an  idea  -  art  in  the  final  analysis  is  life,  good  art  must  bear  current  life,  which  will  let  people  in  the  future  understand  the  life  and  state  of  mind  through  your  works.  We  basically  agree  on  this  point.  But  how  to  join  conceptual  ideas  on  the  basis  of  aesthetics,  making  the  work  carry  the  ideas  of  modern  people?  It  is  difficult  to  find  this  conjunction  point.

Hi:  I  would  say  that  your  work  is  a  fusion  of  traditional  Chinese  painting  expression  and  modern  aesthetics.
Liu:  I 'm  trying  to  do  so.  Recent  two  years,  I  pay  more  attention  to  abstract,  also  try  to  put  it  in  my  creation.  To  me,  abstract  works  from  domestic  artists  like  Liang  Quan  and  Wang  Guangle  are  quite  excellent.  Watching  their  works  makes  me  feel  the  importance  of  persistence.  In  fact,  there  is  neither  lowliness  nor  nobleness  in  the  medium  and  language  of  art,  you  can 't  say  which  one  is  noble  and  which  one  is  vulgar,  insisting  on  your  own  way  of  expression  is  very  important.

Hi:  Figures  in  your  works  is  only  a  newly  added  element,  why  is  that?
Liu:  The  little  girl  was  introduced  when  I  created  the  Jamming  Series.  This  series  comes  from  the  moment  my  computer  got  jammed.  When  a  picture  in  the  computer  is  suddenly  stuck,  the  lower  part  of  the  picture  disappears.  Starting  from  this  concept,  any  images  that  I  paint  can  be  established.  On  the  other  hand,  because  of  the  maturity  of  my  painting  technique,  the  content  I  can  render  is  also  getting  more  and  more,  also  can  be  very  complicated.  These  figures  appearing  in  my  image  might  bring  a   "strange "  feeling.  Sometimes  when  I  watch  my  works,  I  kind  of  like  that   "strange "  feeling,  not  deliberately,  but  inadvertently  reaching  a  surprising  effect,  very  good.

Hi:  The  Jamming  series  presents  a  very  interesting  visual  and  psychological  state.
Liu:  Yes.  The  delaying  of  images,  the  constant  loading  of  pictures  in  mobile  phone  will  bring  anxiety.  Just  like  the  Selfie  Syndrome,  we  also  have  anxiety  for  image  loading.  When  internet  speed  sucks,  mobile  phone  or  computer  is  slow,  the  delay  of  picture  loading  will  drive  us  crazy.

Hi:  Any  odd  and  smart  new  ideas?
Liu:  Yes,  there  is  some,  but  not  mature  yet.  I  want  to  blend  more  abstract  things  into  my  painting,  should  yield  something  subversive,  but  is  it  really  a  step  forward  technically?  It  can  only  be  evaluated  when  these  works  come  out.