Observing from the Sidelines

Introduction

The participating artists of this exhibition are current and previous postgraduates of Mural Painting Department of CAFA. They are very representative in contemporary art circle. On the one hand, they represent the academic development track of the most authoritative institutions in China. On the other hand, they live in the same social context as a group of new generation artists under the intergenerational shift. The same academic background and educational experience have brought them the skills of concentration and rigor, and made them follow traditional academic concepts.

Observing from the Sidelines with a different way from their usual presentation of works, describes their mental activities in the conversation with society, friction, or confrontation, or compromise, or scream, which is the exploration of the real self. On the road of art exploration, there is no right and wrong, only if you dare to take the result.

Artisan’s pure skills they already have, however, the "dialogue" with society, is the key about whether they can really hatch! Think of self as a particle，has a chemical effect with society，to produce adhesion, resistance, or parasitism. This process, it is the “blood” of their work. Parrot what others say, which is not their way, they dare to speak, to collide, to ask questions, what kind of courage this is?

They are young, and art should be young, and also with the brand of the times, the breath of the times. In the contact with the artists, we gradually from strange alumni become friends, and then become partners, which only makes me confident today to as a "preacher" to interpret their works.

Making friends with artists is like “seek scent of a woman", the work is their own, each of people has their own smell, which as Gabriel Garcia Marquez said in Love in the Time of Cholera: "Love is the smell of a bitter almond that is also the smell of cholera." and the taste of the artist is a sign that they naturally emerge when they break through themselves. Liu Yimo’s work series Birth, from his visual image, he is looking for a fit between the visual image and the inner heart, describing a physical sensation of pain, or the sensitive intuition of heat and cold in the skin; Yu Yutian’s work Lonely World tells about only faith allows us to keep the original innocence in this world of materiality; Zhao Tianshun’s Dreamland is to link the future with painting, to find a balance which is difficult to achieve in our life, the barren will never be his spirit; Zhang Hanpu’s work is the expression of reality, the reality of life is the hardest to approach; In Meng Xiangxia’s work, ink flows, and rhyme is transparent, there is a kind of women's unique spiritual temperament; Wang Yicheng’s work is to explore the symbiotic relationship between the individual and the whole, also is to explore the way of social intercourse between self and society; Zhu Baoyuan's work is through painting to interpret the society and the reality brings him a kind of "powerlessness". His delicate touch of the pen makes us feel that he is constantly organizing himself; Slightly different from the above authors, sketch joke in Da Fei’s work, shows that “fool” is a kind of wisdom.

We've been looking for art, and it is the art that has helped us find ourselves.

Now or never... - Marquez