When language fails ...

By Zhang Kun (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-01-23 11:38

A new exhibition entitled Surfacing at Shanghai Gallery of Art features four painters from the 1950s to the 1980s.

Borrowing the title from Canadian writer Margaret Atwood, the curator David Chan identifies with the idea that the visual is a subjective and emotional experience and the use of language to articulate what people see and feel may not be adequate.

You Si started his painting career in the 1980s, at the dawn of China's contemporary arts development.

"Both my parents used to do propaganda paintings," says the artist born in the 1950s, whose paintings are done in water-ink. Even so, You has broken away from traditional Chinese water-ink painting. He pictures his imaginary universe in colors.

In order to present the rich layers and ever changing nature of his universe, You paints not with brushes but eyedroppers. "I have to wait until the ink dries completely on the rice paper before I add a new layer of color," he says.

Chan believes You's experiments with eyedroppers were a major breakthrough for the artist.

"The cell-like forms on the rice paper demand meticulous rendering and a great proficiency with the transparent quality of ink," he says.

The Limited Painting series by Chen Jie, 28, also shows the same meticulous process of creating a painting. The artist calls his paintings a "process of labor", as the reproduction of an image carries no significant meaning except being both a labor of love and conviction. Painting, to the artist, is "more like a conceptual exercise, like a Taoist who believes that meaning shall emerge from action itself," says Chan, the curator.

The only woman of the four featured artists, Li Shuri, 27, uses a spray technique to apply acrylic paint onto canvas. In the series Another Kind of Light the audience recognizes only a fragmented vessel or an architectural model.

The fourth artist, Wu Guangyu, 38, is mainly influenced by impressionist artists such as Monet, Cezanne, and Van Gogh. He depicts ordinary people or objects in bizarre situations. For example, one of his paintings shows a chef reading a book in a garden, while another shows a man in pajamas strolling up a staircase strewn with fallen leaves.

"I like to paint people in uniforms and special costumes," Wu says on the opening night of the show. "The unusual dress makes ordinary scenes fresh and dramatic."

The audience, driven by curiosity, may then feel the quiet disturbance beneath his paintings, composed of thick layers of oil paint. "It's like blurring the border between dream and reality, madness and tranquility, joy and sorrow," Chan says.

Free, until Feb 2

Shanghai Gallery of Art, 3F, Three on the Bund