In the first unit, I mainly used painting to connect my past and imagine the future, how to change my concepts, and put more energy into thinking about realistic painting and rethinking the meaning of images, paintings, and photography. In the second unit, I tried to reflect on my identity through the depiction of local landscapes. I pay more attention to and explore my own understanding of painted images. The interaction between art and the social environment and its interpretation of the socio-political conditions of modern life. With Unite 3, I have a greater appreciation for finding one’s own life and journey, or experiences, in paintings. My paintings become sites where I interact with the objects around me and the painting itself. The content of the picture actually comes from my adventures, solitude and contemplation. These story-telling landscapes created me, and I also expanded and explored these interests and complex cognitions that created me on the canvas. In short, try to use drifting and temporary painting language to add more quality and meaning to a painting.
For the landscape work in this unit I revisited and demonstrated various strategies for working with paint, some making extensive use of multiple renders, the constant accumulation of many translucent layers, thin and thick, sometimes just turpentine and linseed oil To diffuse paint, or even use a small plant sprayer to apply turpentine, work with direct brush strokes. The look of color and texture was a mixture of experimentation, many risky. Of course, these accidents also became the effect and content, making it as my visual representation.
A painting I want it to be a relativized character. How to say it, look like its characteristics can be changing or temporary and can be adjusted. Unlike the my original painting, I can imagine how it will look when the end from the beginning. In new works, I hope that my thinking and processing can be continue working during the painting process, and even accidents, can affect the emotion and technical order of the painting. This can produce many new ideas and unexpected effects, and the final picture is a balance between purpose and discovery, just like playing within the system, being tolerant, and accepting surprises, which enables me to discover more than what I seek. I think this is also an interesting attempt for myself.
Poetry by edgelands
In the early 1990s, I grew up in the suburbs of Beijing. My childhood was spent in the northern suburbs of Beijing. There is a bus stop in the field, a small water canal, and walking through a tall banyan tree to the community where my grandfather lives. There is a small factory in the community, probably for machinery maintenance, and then there are some very wild parks and numerous bush areas. It is easy to walk for a short time and find yourself lost in a back alley or wasteland; along the Explore the perimeter of the wooded neighborhood; an old path through rough scrub, straight, narrow, overgrown in places, through fields and woodland. It’s easy to find yourself on the edge of farmland. The railroad tracks have disappeared, but the roads are littered with industrial remnants: crumbling, overgrown brick buildings and rusted scraps of metal machinery. For a child, it was paradise on the edge.
I am interested in mixed spaces where suburbia and the natural environment meet. "Fence" is the first stop of unit 3 painting. The nameless fence... carries a path and incomplete stone walls waiting for maintenance, which is something that few people Noticed the view.Behind the yellow warning town and the orange fence are hills and grass. I textured the sky and road. It could have been done with more content, but I wanted to simplify it by blurring the image space. A view into consciousness. I think the fence I saw was much closer and more interesting than I thought. The fence with a network structure, the stone wall, and the green space have become familiar but cannot be ignored. Including "fence", "car", "tent city" and "boat".
Anyone who spent a childhood wandering around the edges of Beijing, when the city and suburbs negotiated their borders, will remember the scenery with nostalgia. Now the bushes, wastelands, and old neighborhoods where I lived have become urban scenery. I think these works are a continuation of my complex reflections on landscape writing and marginal areas in unit 2 "bus station".
The reflection after unit 2, I read an award-winning article titled "Edgelands" written by Marion Shoard in 2002. She first introduced the term "edgelands" and defined it as "the space between the city and the countryside." interface zone”. Margins are contested spaces where city and countryside collide.
Beside this, the works of George Shaw are also a good example for me, as his work revolves around his nostalgic connection to his childhood home of Coventry's Ashland Estate through depictions of sparsely populated places. These landscapes are both familiar and disturbing. His paintings of the estate surrounding the woodland show that this place was also on the edge.
For me the edgelands is a complex landscape. A contested region that is constantly reinventing itself as economic and social trends come in and out. If the beauty of parts of Britain's remote countryside can confer a sense of timelessness, the edgelands have an entirely different feel. It’s more story-telling, more casual, and more present! Think back to Beijing, every summer, or for a few months. Revisiting the edgelands areas where I lived, when I go there again, it is likely that they will be rebuilt, the demolished factories will be turned into new business, and the uncared for wild lands will be cleared and beautified with new neat bricks. Parks, abandoned cars, and warehouses have all become completely orderly things. The urbanization process is so fast. While you lament the progress of the city, it more easier make me miss those spaces that can be explored and written.It's Not only is it more natural and colorful, it also provides unique records of culture. I think this is a more harmonious balance between humans and nature.
There’s certainly plenty more that I’ll read again and again, The poets Paul Farley and Michael Symmonds Roberts wrote a book called Edgelands: A Journey Through England . True Wilderness explores the role of unique environments on the edge in our cultural imagination. Sarah De Nardi, Hilary Orange, et al. - The Routledge Handbook of Memory and Place. Talking about memory, place, and visual imagination.
Overall, I hope that my work will not only be my personal memory, but also be accessible and open to the audience. Urban progress has led to the continuous movement of sand in the marginal areas, and any text related to these landscapes has become a snapshot. For the works' bus station ',' fence ',' car ',' tent city ', and' boat ', I actually did not want to have a clear description, and I am even weakening some of their characteristics - in order to try to celebrate and evoke them at a specific time.
Urban progress keeps the sand moving at its edges, and any writing about these landscapes becomes a snapshot. I don’t actually have a clear description of the works “bus station”, “fence”, “car”, “tent city” and “boat”, and I am even weakening some of their characteristics - in order to just try to celebrate and evoke them at a specific time.
Paul Farley and Michael Symmons Roberts have written a book - Edgelands - in praise of England's marginal places: the miles of parking lots, industrial estates, scrubby fields and derelict yards that exist on the edges of our cities.In this YouTube video, They take us on a tour of Birmingham's nameless spaces
The Unofficial Countryside is an observational documentary portrait of the ‘edgeland’ landscapes that exist between the urban and the rural. Titled after naturalist Richard Mabey’s seminal book, the film documents the intrinsic characteristics of these places, where nature thrives on the fringes of the city. Filmed on the outskirts of Manchester (UK), in a patchwork of urban woodland, ramshackle smallholdings, abandoned industrial sites, utility substations, scrapyards, open fields and riverside beaches, the documentary includes a voiceover drawn from Marion Shoard’s essay ‘Edgelands of Promise’, and captures the rich biodiversity of both native and introduced species, in a landscape shaped by the activities and imprints of people passing through.
Compared to the natural scenery, the edgelands is a place full of possibilities, mystery, and beauty.
I hope the audience can understand and appreciate them through my works. I hope those landscape paintings are not only my personal memories, but also a celebration of these places; I also wish to break through the duality of nature and urban landscape writing; Explore the unobserved memory and cultural aspects of natural landscapes.
When passing through these casual scenery, we find a place as difficult to determine and define as poetry, but like poetry, when you see it, you will know it. Sometimes it often involves decay and stagnation, but it can also be dynamic and profound mystery.
Edgelands is always on the move, can it become a guide to reflect on consumer lifestyles? Or a collective memory of nature. I think this is what I need to explore in the future.
Incredible inversion
In the third unit, I looked to the suburbs of my childhood and my journeys for inspiration, discovering an interest in hybrid spaces where natural environments meet human culture, or what is now called limbo and our complex perception of wilderness. I try my best to focus on landscape creation, emphasizing the dialectical unity of landscape, space and place, and thereby extending the power of images triggered by landscape as a "cultural intermediary".
In June I started working on "a sky full of stars" thanks to the larger space.
I feel like this is the relatively successful painting I've done here. I think this is my other narrative, and I very much hope that this narrative can be very open to interpretation, like the inverted snow-capped mountains, the aurora and stars echoing the deep water, and the car's rearview mirror - that gradually disappears Lost scenery. In this painting I tried to introduce hints, something that can evoke a wide range of experiences.
The past can be seen, touched, tasted, smelled, heard, and read. Empathy, repetition, memory, and commemoration have overwhelmed traditional history.
David Loventhal's "The Past is Another Country" mentions the charm of time travel, where the allure of the past transcends the nostalgic desire for fantasy or a replacement for the past.
Reviewing some real past has always been a beautiful wish. Many people are willing to pay a high price to relive a year of personal life. I hope these reversals in a sky full of stars can be extended to more time dimensions. It is a kind of revisiting for me, a kind of organization, but I also hope that the things I feel in the picture... may exist independently of my thoughts.In that case, will I invent some devices and forms that I can use?
In this work, I wish I won't remember this brilliant aurora scene here, but a sound there, but the world in the mirror; It's like listening to the past... Strong emotions will definitely leave a mark. Being able to elevate to another realm, with new insights into history and memory, prejudice and objectivity, artifacts and monuments, identity and authenticity.
In terms of imagery, the northern lights and snow capped mountains seem to evoke an incredible feeling. But I hope that these unique elements in the picture can resonate like the scenery of the street ahead - not that familiar feelings become unfamiliar, but rather the opposite: unfamiliar things become familiar. I tried to break down some of the content itself, to some extent like disrupting my sense of reality in memory. It's like integrating memories, real-life images, and perceptual experiences into this painting. It also fits the Contemporary Art and Memory: Images of Recollection and Remmbrance written by Joan Gibbons. This not only focuses on my personal memory, but also serves as the art of my autobiography, which can serve as an archive, revisionist memory and postmemory, as well as the absence of memory in oblivion. finally to public memory.
I wanted to create a painting for the viewer and for me, when things have a purpose that is relevant to us, we recognize their activities and goals. Although the details I notice will be different, this experience of opening a window (rearview mirror) is not my completely personal experience, but it is like connecting the past and the present, and the inversion (reflection) of the iceberg together becomes that Over time, it became an artistic element. I extracted several characteristics of the facade of light, mountain, street, rear view mirror, based on my experience making them more special and more typical than they actually are. I think you'd see these visuals in any natural, urban environment, not necessarily the Arctic. (This also serves as a reference to my other paintings) This scene as part of my personal journey, abstraction, fantasy or dream has become more recognizable than the actual scene.
The past remains essential - and inescapable. A quarter-century after the publication of his classic account of man's attitudes to his past, David Lowenthal revisits how we celebrate, expunge, contest and domesticate the past to serve present needs. He shows how nostalgia and heritage now pervade every facet of public and popular culture. History embraces nature and the cosmos as well as humanity. The past is seen and touched and tasted and smelt as well as heard and read about. Empathy, re-enactment, memory and commemoration overwhelm traditional history.
How to integrate the stillness of photography with the temporal effect of movies in one scene? I try to break through some familiar and comfortable perspectives in the picture to stimulate the dramatic effect: the entire perspective is like a hidden lonely character observing an iceberg on the water surface. And where I thought the images were supposed to be very tempting, the dazzling northern lights had dramatically invaded the optical darkness of the Earth's surface. I hope they become the reversals of the picture, and the appearance of these two reversals will bring out spaces that cannot be easily discovered, while the starry sky in the North Pole itself seems to have no origin, no opportunity, and even some luck to reach there. When they appear, you don't know if it just appeared or if you just noticed it.
Another surprise in the picture was the perspective inside the car, including the rearview mirror itself, the car, and the scenery, just like when I reproduced the scene at that time. The rearview mirror attracted my attention not because of the content they displayed within the frame of the image, but because the entire scene itself served as a frame, as a unique geometric order or symbol.
I took a taxi from Murmansk and drove all the way to the village in the Arctic. I'm sorry that I forgot the name, and I really can't find the location on the map. Maybe it's too small. There are only a few houses in total, and they are generally abandoned. I think I drove about 5 hours in this old car. Most of the scenery I saw from the car window was cold and deserted. As the sun set very early, it even made me feel like I was on a Caribbean island on a route to the end of the world. The village is not friendly to tourists, not the locals (people are very nice elsewhere), but the entire area, food, accommodation, and the outside is like a lonely world in outer space. Wherever the people are, they unconsciously think of us. It's meaning in itself. All in all, the time there was exciting and profound.
Snow and Rendering
I have often used snow to depict scenes recently, and I have found that snow is an element that easily evokes memories and experiences. It is also a beautiful flat visual effect that can always influence people's emotions and thoughts in some way. I believe that it is both a form of representation and a way of rendering, capable of presenting the three-dimensional world in a two-dimensional plane with little loss. On the contrary, this rendering and presentation cleverly captures indescribable real moments and depicts a highly concentrated world.
I think I actually use snow as an example to study and experiment with its paint configuration in painting, forming a mixture that sometimes appears and sometimes disappears. Just like how I responded a lot to it in this year's painting: boats, water, mountains, weather, light, these interesting elements combined with the dreamy and sweet effects of snowflakes can make the picture decorative and dramatic.
Since Greenberg, the "planarity" feature of painting has been constantly discussed. Leaving aside the debates of various schools, one important feature of painting demonstrated by planarity is the abstract ability of painting.
In the process of creating "Christmas night", I tried many abstract and flat experiments: I think the original photo itself is incredible, beautiful and dreamy. The photo above is already a result of my efforts to enhance it in the dark room. However, when transferring the photo to the canvas, I think it is more important to strengthen this sense and psychology, otherwise the appearance introduced from the photo will still make the picture appear mediocre, I think this is also my recent reflection on photos.
I used a more prominent yellow color for the boundary between the sky in the snow and the trees. Compared to the original picture, there were some strange and discontinuous areas, or some parts that were not visually appealing. I regarded them as golden frames, so that the original images in the picture formed new images, which actually triggered a reaction in my heart.
It may be by chance, but I think it's more of an active choice. I flipped the entire painting around. At once, the image was like an illusion, a projection or mirror image, and I continued to weaken their inherent image. The beams of light emitted by the two dazzling white street lights fainted in the snow, blurring and lacking three-dimensional sense. The flat features were constantly emphasized in the painting, and the balance of the entire image was constantly disrupted, making it easier for the elements of the entire image to interact with each other. Just like snow becoming a mirror, the reflected image seems to present two parallel worlds coexisting but with subtle differences
The two paintings "boat" and "snow", like many of my other paintings, I made up a lot of the appearance of snow. Like "boat", I divided the snow into three forms: linear snow mountains, snow covering the ground like a gauze, and snow rocks on the edge. In "snow", I turned snowflakes and light into dots of different sizes. Some of them are actual snowflakes, and some of the light is like the material of falling snowflakes. These paint spots have even become the background color of paintings and drawing boards. I turned their style into an ambient effect. It's like a screen, like "christmas night". The screen can also be virtual, like a movie or projected into an indeterminate space, extending the literal meaning of snow. Sometimes appearing and sometimes disappearing, the image fades in and out of the snow.
The same idea, when I look at Peter Doig's ski jacket, snow, snowfield, snowy mountains, they break the boundaries and become a form, I like it, like a screen, allowing you to see through it Other scenes. It is no longer a perspective, but an idea, a concept of snow.
This is also my new attempt.
I tried to extract the snow as a screen for later stories, and then form a new dimension. In this way, the picture seems more emotionally elusive and mysterious.
Landscape and modern consciousness
As early as the ancient Roman period, scene painting was considered a deliberate act.
Writer Jonathan Bode once said that the scenery of Western Europe, at least as early as the 15th century, was declared a witness landscape, a deliberate sign of human existence.
This is my second large-scale work created in Cumberwell. Although this image is not something I personally saw, I believe this painting is also a very important theme for me, as it is my perception, experience, and experience of nature and society in the current world. It is also possible that as a painter, I am reflecting on war. I think this painting explores to some extent what a landscape should look like, or how to present society and culture that are closely related to us through a visual language.It also responds to writer J.T. Mitchell's observation that landscapes are natural scenes mediated by culture.
Just like the video above, it actually comes from Russian news in the 1980s. A helicopter crashed in Russia. Central Forest Lake Area. Actually, this is a very sad news, but when I see that after years of natural changes, it has integrated into the scenery here, and even this accident has become another thing. Just like the author Malcolm Andrews believed that when we experience an object, it becomes the concept we see. The lost and dilapidated artificial landscape here should have corresponded to the themes of drowning, rescue, and loss, but after integrating into nature, it has evolved into a tragic beauty.
Any accidental or irrelevant thing that is unrelated to a recognized theme of life may not have direct significance. But we cannot provide a convincing explanation for the reasons behind their occurrence or their current impact. Facing this scene, although someone in the video is describing its process, when it appears in the form of an image or photo in front of me, it has already entered my imagination. When drawing this painting, it becomes an active memory, just like the movie itself recording its story, adding ambiguity and new colors.
For visuals, I try to create a painting about sound, like sound passing through a void that happens to be water. I think this is my initial connection with this painting. I like to search for floating things, nature has stories and plots, and even a bit strange. The helicopter that crashed into the lake undoubtedly reminded me of the ongoing wars in the world. Although this was an unfortunate accident, the feeling of sadness was not the first thing I thought of or hoped to evoke. It even aroused my thoughts on the end of the war and imagination of the following scenes. That's also why I didn't name a lost helicopter or something like that, but a parachute. I think there's a hope in it.
I hope to incorporate my imagination into the exploration of this painting, trying to translate the uniqueness of this original image in my own way, and forming a new force - the audience's memory will also appear in the new image. Just like the non specific pressure and suggestion brought by fleeting impressions in the scene: this is what we remember, but perhaps until we can recall certain similarities. I have no intention of deliberately explaining anything. I think this kind of self reflection can actually be reflected in painting.
I really enjoy the process of shaping him. This painting is fast and simple. It feels easy to do. I tried to extend the image to the edge of the painting, which was something I didn't know how to do before.
Random notes
I have always been interested in photography and often create through photos rather than memory. For me, photos are to some extent simpler than sketching.
This year, I have also been reflecting on how to use images, whether it is for myself or others. Of course, there are actually many articles here that can help me understand, but recently I have been paying more attention to how artists use photos and images. Temporarily focus on their specific methods of transforming images into paintings.
Many examples: Peter Doeg uses color to enhance emotional expression, not to express emotions, but to create a sense of experience and immersion. I think it is precisely this painting concept that gives his paintings a colorful narrative. This is a very useful reference for me, and I have also created two paintings to try and make some changes. Of course, I don't use color to construct a narrative, but I can amplify the color elements in my artwork to enhance my narrative. This is very helpful to me in this regard.
Jeff Wall's photos were deeply restructured and designed.
Many of Tuymans' works have low contrast, perhaps because he has been using abstraction to blur images. This mediocre and blurry image brings a sense of intimacy to the audience.
I also try to use it to draw some scenery that looks different from before. I try to make the colors as simple as possible and use some abstract thinking in it, making some objects in the scene as unreal as possible, just simple block colors. If I think the effect of this work is good, I will decide to continue drawing larger paintings to further try.
Jeff Wall, A suffer Gust of wind(after Hokusai),1993
The sudden gust of wind captured something that had frozen in time. It depicts four individuals sweeping open landscapes in a sudden gust of wind. However, this photo was carefully staged. This work is based on woodcuts by Japanese painter and printmaker Katushika Hokusai (160-1849), and it took Wall over a year and over a hundred individual shots to complete.
I created these two paintings almost side by side, including the wine bottle. I think this is a continuation of this group of works. I used to often go on outings with friends, to some faraway and primitive areas, and there was also an interesting thing. We were shopping in Snow, and there was a tent in the middle of the store. She said she prefers camping indoors, with air conditioning and no mosquitoes. I think this is also the reality of modern urban children. But camping is a very interesting thing, full of feelings of freedom, romance, and joy. I think this may be why people in our city always have a longing for camping.