Piziarte Contemporary Art
| Hu Zhiying a cura di Manuela e Patrizia Cucinella |
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About Beyond the Chains of Illusion - Hu Zhiying’s Paintings from 1989 to 2009 Hu Zhiying is an artist with cultural philosophical meditation and experiences as his motivation for creation. He does not concern the changes on the surface of social reality, and also not the expression of individual psychology and experience. During his 20 years creation, the only thing he emphasized is the exploration of ultimate theme and the infinite approach to some possible transcendent spirit. Under such a driving force, he adjusted the characteristics of various mediums like ink and wash, lacquer, greasepaint and others in his different phases of creation, and he also adopted many symbols, images and indications from various cultures, to imply the transient nature and illusory essence of culture through dislocation and re-creation of representation fragments in different culture systems, his poetic intuition is also reflected out in the crack of these representations. “Beyond the Chains of Illusion” is a work of Erich Fromm, a philosopher of Frankfurt School. In this book, the author connected the theory of Unconsciousness by Freud and the ideological theory of Marx, re-reflected the possibility of human freedom. Here, we conclude Hu Zhiying’s painting language and art realm with the title of this book: to reach some invisible substance through the visible “chains” of a series of visual symbols, images and indications, which is the authenticity of existence that cannot be defined by culture, perceived by experience or touched by language. *************************************************************************** By Hu Zhiying After making a penetrating study of traditional Chinese culture and the history of Western painting, imitating artists of the abstract expressionist school and experimenting with and producing ready-mades, I have taken up painting again. In the last 15 years I have been exploring a question I call “cultural contrast”, a broad field that I aim to explore further. In notes on my works, I write: “In my work I combine the constant cultural value of the symbols in Chinese painting and the unfolding eclecticism of painting taking place in the West.” I combine Chinese traditional landscape painting with the elements of vary art styles in the West. I like to regard my works as equivalent to the real world and not merely a documentation of it. My paintings frequently synthesis imagines of many kinds of objects, where those in the background often change places with those in the foreground. My works illustrate “cultural contrast” as an abstract and concrete field of knowledge. When the viewer tries to discern the origin of this field and identify the relationship between the themes of art and their prototypes, they are likely to lose themselves in the dreamlike realm of the paintings. In my easel paintings on canvas or board, apart from conventional materials like ink, oil and acrylic colors, I apply gold and silver power, Chinese Varnish. These materials, expressing an archaic mood in a multitude of imagines, add substance to the “cultural contrast”. The various materials, the diversity of images and the glossy surface are easily identifiable with the bright yet unstable reality of the world in which we live, and at the same time, imply a dark, mysterious world lurking beneath the dazzling surface. The series works "Remake Bacon" is, recently, based on above, and uses for reference the certain elements of Bacon’s art to be the more prominent power of the intense images, more directly enter the person's soul dialog or the monologue. To use oil, alternately, acrylic with the unique material——Chinese Vanish in different level alternate, lets the work have a superior visual effect, but this quotes the Bacon’s art elements, and converges with others art elements in the dim atmosphere which the elements become vary outward appearance and substantive content. The vehement contrast between the intense brushwork and the strong color display those non-conventional changeful and extraordinary images and the soul kingdom, the pictorial technologic language and the profound artistic conception in harmony. |
