Biography
I am a Chinese-painting artist.
Follows the context of the Big City series, the That-Has-Been series is an accumulation of my past brush-and-ink experience. Apart from the use of base materials and special types of binders, the mediums in this series are limited to the three most authentic Eastern tools: brush, ink and Xuan paper. As the range of tools is determined, the main issue is how to build up the height of the art. Ink wash is therefore the medium of choice because, as a non-Western medium, it best represents the Chinese spirit.
Ink wash produces its own characteristic strokes and unique visual impressions. It creates organic forms when applied in a seemingly random manner. I paint in grayscale to simulate the black-and-white effect of newspapers and photographs, as well as to imply a low-key, restrained approach, a distance between the subjects and myself. The process of my painting is rational; gray “evokes neither feelings nor associations” and thus helps focus on what is happening in the paintings.
By simulating overexposure or the flowing texture produced by the chemical bath during photographic processes, I create a feeling that time is passing by in the pictures. Some details and contours are clear while others are blurred, and the picture is melting and self-deconstructing, emulating a nostalgic atmosphere of old photos and leading the work toward ambiguity.
Through treatments such as gray-scaling photographic images, defocusing, blurring, omitting details and erasing them, personal emotions are excluded, while objectivity, truthfulness and distance of photography are intentionally maintained. Such cold treatments produce the calm, low-key posture of a bystander while shifting the audience’s attention from the ink wash material to the atmosphere itself of the work and its representation of the event, behind which the uniqueness of painting is concealed. It is such a metaphorical approach that is important in conveying the intentions of my work.
