Monthly Archives: November 2020

Artists can paint beautiful things for people to appreciate, or express happiness through works. 

--Hong Bao

Listening to the Time, 63ⅹ63cm

Dunhuang has always been a popular tourist attraction. Recently, the broadcast of the variety show "Paintings Hidden in Dunhuang" has made Dunhuang a hit. The exploration of the secret of the "Nine-Colored Deer" mural that has never faded for thousands of years in the show has amazed many viewers.

Afternoon Time, 33ⅹ33cm

The secret of the unfading color of the murals for thousands of years is attributed to the magical mineral material of rock color, which is hailed as true oriental color, as a painting material derived from the random smearing of primitive humans.

How Many Seconds Does the Fish Remember? 46ⅹ42cm

The young artist Hong Bao said: Most of the mineral paint itself is stone, and its life span can be said to be with the earth. Like Egyptian murals, Indian murals, and Dunhuang murals, their appearance has not changed after thousands of years. Even if it gets damp, the paint itself will not undergo chemical changes. In other words, if I record my emotions at a certain moment, it will last for thousands of years and become eternal.

Hong Bao has been obsessed with mineral painting creation for many years, she has rich experience in the research of modern mineral painting, and uses this ancient technique to depict the interest of daily life. Her works are gorgeous and warm, artistic and decorative, and are very popular among people living in luxury houses.

Hong Bao said: “One of the characteristics of mineral painting that attracts me is its material, it has a kind of rusty texture, and there is some sparkle under the light, which is very suitable for expressing the dreamy and innocent peach blossom land in my heart.”

Hong Bao studied fine brushwork and ink painting when she was an undergraduate, mainly in fresh light colors. Later, she was impressed by the rich colors of mineral painting. So she studied mineral painting with Ma Wenxi (one of the first domestic teachers went to study mineral painting in Japan) at the postgraduate stage for more than ten years until now.

Accompany, 50ⅹ50cm

During the postgraduate period, Hong Bao and her teacher Ma Wenxi went to the Western Regions to collect customs. In more than a month, they investigated the Dunhuang Grottoes and Xinjiang Grottoes in depth.

The content of the murals in the Grottoes is very rich. Although it is related to religion, it also depicts the daily life scenes of people at that time. There are other interesting things, like animals, landscapes and houses. There are also scenes where people dance, sing, eat, or travel. This has brought a wealth of creative inspiration to Hong Bao.

Radish Candy, 83ⅹ83cm

Most of Hong Bao's works depict big and small things in life, such as nature, animals, and children. Combined with her imagination, her works bring us a poetic and romantic sense of "earthly snug". This kind of childlike, dreamy and gorgeous, picture forms a unique charm of Hong Bao's works.

Painting with mineral color is quite extravagant. The azurite paint is about 10 yuan a gram, and the material cost of a painting is no less than four figures. "The preciousness of materials makes people take every painting, every stroke, and every moment seriously." Hong Bao said.

Due to the expensive materials, traditional techniques, and time-consuming of mineral painting, there are not many artists who are interested in it. According to industry statistics, "There are no more than 1,000 professional mineral painters across in the whole country."

Listening to the Time, 50ⅹ50cm

The Dream of Lights is Happy, 90ⅹ60cm

A Cloud of Happiness, 168ⅹ84cm

Dim Night, 83ⅹ83cm

Jump, 50ⅹ50cm

Day and Night are Forgotten Flowers, 68ⅹ69cm

Wake Up in the Misty Morning, 24ⅹ27cm

Light a Lamp and Dream of a Small Paper Boat, 66ⅹ66cm

An Innocent World, 57ⅹ55cm

The Night Comes Quietly, 46ⅹ42cm

Cui Jun is a Chinese Asian Modern & Contemporary artist. He was born in Harbin, Heilongjiang Province in 1982 and graduated from Second Studio, Oil Painting Department of School of Fine Arts, Jilin College of The Arts in 2005. His work was featured in an exhibition at the Line Gallery. Cui Jun's first artwork to be offered at auction was untitled at Beijing Huachen Auctions in 2012.

My creation process is in fact a rivalry process with myself, which is full of unknown anxiety and the surprise of discovery from the initial concept to the final completion on the canvas. As a Virgo, I have my certain requirements on the image effect, so my painting process is relatively ritualized, flat painted strokes, meticulously outlined edge, abundant details hidden in the obscure corners, these need to consume a lot of time working at his desk to achieve the final production visage, this sense of accomplishment which is acquired after time-consuming works really makes personal satisfaction being met.

--Cui Jun

Behind Schedule, acrylic on canvas, 80×60cm, 2014

Childhood, acrylic on canvas, 90×100cm, 2015

You are surrounded, don't make unnecessary resistance! acrylic on canvas, 40×40cm, 2013

Station, acrylic on canvas, 90×100cm, 2014

Good Good Study, Day Day Up, acrylic on canvas, 60×50cm, 2014

“Old” Fresh Meat, acrylic on canvas, 60×50cm, 2014

The Wall, acrylic on canvas, 50×60cm, 2013

“Lambor” and “ghini”, acrylic on canvas, 60×80cm, 2014

Subway Ⅱ, acrylic on canvas, 80×60cm, 2012

Untitled, acrylic on canvas, 50×50cm, 2012

The Road, acrylic on canvas, 50×60cm, 2013

The Double-decker Bus, acrylic on canvas, 80×60cm, 2013

The Cinema, acrylic on canvas, 120×90cm, 2013

You're a Big Winner, acrylic on canvas, 120×150cm, 2015

Lunch in the Lab, acrylic on canvas, 50×80cm, 2015

Roller Coaster, acrylic on canvas, 60×50cm, 2013

Sunday, acrylic on canvas, 80×60cm, 2014

Untitled, acrylic on canvas, 60×60cm, 2012

Take a Group Photo to Mark the Occasion, acrylic on canvas, 80×60cm, 2013

Can I Help you? acrylic on canvas, 50×60cm, 2013

                                                                               Frank Stella

Born in Massachusetts in 1936, Frank Stella entered the Phillips Academy in Andover to study art at the age of 14, and then went to Princeton University to study history after graduation. After setting up a personal studio in New York, his simple geometric paintings made him the leader of the minimalist abstract art movement in the 1960s and one of the first painters to use three-dimensional canvas. He was awarded the Julio Gonzalez Award (Lifetime Artistic Achievement Award) in 2009.

Averroes, 1960 Aluminum paint on canvas 116.4 × 227 cm

Frank Stella and his work《The Michael Kohlhaas Curtain》

In November 2017, the new exhibition "Experiment and Change" by Frank Stella, a representative of post-war abstract art, opened at the NSU Art Museum in Florida. The exhibition showed nearly 300 paintings and sculptures spanning 60 years of his career, "Many of these works have not been exhibited before and will not be exhibited again, because they are my collection - sorry, they are my wife's collection. "The artist told me.

Had Gadya: Back Cover, from Illustrations After El Lissitzky\\\\'s Had Gadya, 1982-84

Frank Stella is 81 years old. His works can be found in the modern and contemporary collections of almost any major art museum in the United States. In the minimalism movement of the 1960s, Stella pioneered "Black Paintings", and then from three-dimensional canvas to the combination of collage and relief painting, from minimalism to maximalism... His exploration and practice in the past six decades is just a microcosm of art in the changing times.

Zambezi, 1959 Enamel paint on canvas 230.5 × 200 cm

Stella became famous very early. In 1959, just one year after graduating from the Department of History of Princeton University, he was selected for the group exhibition "Sixteen American" at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York with his work "The Marriage of Reason and Squalor II". This exhibition is regarded as one of the beginnings of the American minimalism movement in the 1960s. While the bold creation is controversial, it also gains the affirmation of many art critics: "there is no doubt that they are 'Innovating', and the old form can no longer carry their ideas."

Young Frank Stella

Stella's paintings were included in the permanent collection of MoMA after the exhibition. His pioneering work was distinctive and powerful: on the large canvas with symmetrical composition, ordinary household painting brushes and enamel were used, and black with the width of brush was spread parallel on the background, leaving the space between the original color lines of the canvas. He rejected the expressiveness of brush strokes, but emphasized the recognition of canvas as an integrated structure of two-dimensional plane and three-dimensional objects. This technique is reminiscent of the way of factory work with the pure structure and abstract visual expression. A few years later, he uttered the famous saying in a radio interview, "what you see is what you see", which became the most famous footnotes of his own works and the whole minimalist movement. The "Benjamin Moore" series, which was created in 1961, was fully collected by Andy Warhol. This set of simple monochromatic square paintings directly inspired Warhol's Pop series.

Gran Cairo, 1962 Alkyd on canvas 217.3 × 217.3 cm

Stella, who had a profound influence on the latecomers, also talked about the influence he received from the classical masters. He grew up with modernism and studied 20th-century painting at school, from Manet in the 1860s to his own fame in the 1960s. Stella said that "the past is real", but "what is real" is a problem for everyone, and there are many problems with the translation of the word "real" into art.

Untitled (Rabat) (From Ten Works by Ten Painters), 1964 61 × 50.8 cm

Stella, who became famous at the age of 23 and ushered in his first personal retrospective at the age of 34, has always practiced at the forefront of art. The series "Polish village", which started in 1971, has irregular geometry and bright colors. It refers to the Polish synagogue destroyed in Hitler's period. From this series, Stella experimented with computer-aided composition and Sketchpad cutting. Three years later, he used the "Brazilian" series to visually emphasize the trace of approaching to the hand. Blank space and brush strokes can be seen everywhere, but in fact, this is the opposite of the artist's personal work. It is the first time that he has completely used metal materials and outsourced it to a factory.

Jablonow, 1972 Mixed media on canvas 248.9 × 294.6 cm

Inaccessible Island Rail, 1977

At the end of the 1970s, starting from "Exotic Bird", he no longer used the simple square or geometric abstraction of the early years. He felt the natural flexibility through bird observation and made extensive use of metal and multi-material relief painting forms to express rich curves, and gradually transited to "maximalism". By the early 1990s, Stella's canvases were extended to the facades of urban buildings, and his expressive visual style was magnified in frescoes, such as "Dusk" for the Pacific Bell Building in Los Angeles. At the same time, Stella began to use 3D drawing programs to create image renderings and thus turned more to sculpture.

La Scienza della Fiacca

Puerto Rican Blue Pigeon (from Exotic Bird Series), 1977

Stella is not an art star in the general sense. He was called "the sculptor's painter" by the sculptor John Chamberlain, and was also dubbed "high-I.Q.art" by the New York Times. In his paintings and sculptures, he often refers to music, literature and philosophy, and injects intriguing connotations into abstract works. For example, the "Diderot" series in 1974 was named after an 18th-century French philosopher; the "Scarlatti" series in 2006, each piece of work was named after the 18th-century keyboard sonata by the Italian musician.

Bow Ties with Ribbons, 2016

Ifafa II, 1964 Metallic powder and acrylic on canvas 197 × 331.5 × 7.5 cm

Lake City (Second Version)

Cantahar, 1998 Acrylic on canvas

Anecdote from the Recent War, 1999

Diavolozoppo，#2,4x，1984

East Euralia, from Imaginary Places, 1995

I remember talking to a friend once, and I asked: "If Da Vinci painted in modern times, what would he paint?"

He said:

"Maybe he would not paint classical paintings, but paint like Picasso.

With Leonardo’s fashion, he should not be left behind, and even create some advanced paintings that we cannot understand. "

This answer is very interesting. It inspired my reverie about time travel in painting. At the same time, it also started me thinking: Is there a big difference between classical aesthetics and modern ones? Is the classic and the modern really completely separated?

Regarding these issues, the works of Ukrainian artist Alexey Kondakov may help us think. His works mainly use advanced digital synthesis technology to move the characters in classical oil paintings into modern life scenes. Alexey interpreted his work like this: Put the gods and angels into familiar life scenes which makes people feel the kind of common humanity that has been passed down for thousands of years, and this is also the bond that we share common beliefs and connect with each other.

Now, let's put aside these esoteric questions first, and take a look at this kind of "time travel" picture because it is so interesting.

Understand the hard work of others, read the favors of others, know the warmth of others, and forgive other people's mistakes.

I don't want to expose my soul to those curious ordinary people.

I don't want to expose my soul to those curious ordinary people.

When I was young, I used to think that money was the most important thing in life, now that I am old, I know it is.

It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or boring.

None of us can stand people who have the same problems as ourselves.

I like to talk to myself because it saves time and no one argues with me. (Um...Can you buskers on the subway be staying away? My kid is sleeping!)

It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances.

To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.

A man who does not think for himself does not think at all.

What is the chief cause of divorce? Marriage.

Beauty is the only thing that is not hurt by time.

The heart was made to be broken.

It is not selfish to live the life you want but to ask others to live the life you want is selfish.

Be yourself, because everyone else is taken.

One can always be kind to people one cares nothing about.

Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future.

A score of 59 on the test is sadder than a score of 0 on the test. The most painful thing in the world is not not having it, but almost being able to do it.

Botanists say that thorns are underdeveloped buds because they hardened. If they live in a favorable environment or are better nurtured, they will become lush branches. It turns out that all thorns, if they are well taken care of, should be tender leaves and flowers.

Time is a scoundrel, always ruins our expectations.

“…time wasn’t passing…it was turning in a circle…”

--Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Hundred Years of Solitude. 

Wang Hichuan, Art Writing

Acrylic on canvas

180x170, 2020

Wang Haichuan

Wang Haichuan was born in 1968 in Jilin Province, China, and currently lives and works between Beijing and Chongqing.

Wang Haichuan was another artist in this current group exhibition who immediately reflected on the new bewildering normal of 2020 in his artworks. The beginning of the quarantine meant the beginning of his diaries on Tibetan paper, with each artwork titled accordingly with the day of its creation.    

In 1997 he graduated from the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute, with a major in visual arts. He used to work in the field of architecture and landscape for many years and is widely recognized as a visual artist. Wang Haichuan’s works destroy the superficial characters of private lives and harmonious society. He attempts to demolish the trace of reality and replace it with relics of time. His works were featured in solo, as well as group exhibitions and art fairs within China and abroad.

Wang Haichuan's quarantine diaries is a set of acrylic paintings on Tibetan paper. The basis of this paper is a root of a local poisonous plant, which is known to be insect-proof and long-lasting - this led to it being used to write religious scripts or contracts. His works and the use of this material display communication with his spiritual self, as well as landscapes, architecture, patterns or human figures. Wang painted quickly as if he were capturing a dream on this spiritual paper, which is often difficult or even sometimes impossible to grasp. 

Wang Hichuan Feb.14

Acrylic on Tibetan paper

25.5x37.5cm, 2020

Characteristic of his work is a combination of eclectic imagery, floral decorative patterns, fragments of architecture, stretches of layered paint, and above all an obvious enjoyment of storytelling. His work created on February 3rd “Feb.3” tells of the news reports circulating through Chinese media on that day. The news talked about the new coronavirus originated from bats in the South China seafood market. Another announcement, that seemed to present a bigger danger at that moment, delivered the news about the locust outbreak in Africa that threatened to reach China. It went on elaborating on how successful management of the locust outbreak in China in the past was stopped with the help of geese and ducks - locusts’ natural enemies. In the painting, an old lady is ready to load her giant goose on the truck. On the stem over the truck sits a considerably oversized locust nibbling on the grass, right next to him is a bat just as significant in size. Further on the right is a  Buddhist deity hovering over the whole scene. And who knows it might have just the power to eradicate those threats and bring peace of mind to humanity...

Wang Hichuan, Feb.3

Acrylic on Tibetan paper

25.5x37.5cm, 2020

Over the past several years, Wang Haichuan has made a number of drawings whose most distinct shared feature is the combination of various images constructed by a certain internal logic. Most of those images come from the Internet, a place infested with images and therefore the most convenient place for picking up images. Arguably, the mass production and transmission of images are reshaping our knowledge about the world and are swaying our judgments. Like ordering food from a menu, we have always made our judgments based on an image. Therefore, with Wang Haichuan, images are both his drawing objects and the components of his works, the reason of which is that there are a certain reason and context to whatever objects we choose. 

Wang Hichuan, Feb.13

Acrylic on Tibetan paper

25.5x37.5cm, 2020

For Wang Haichuan, the decision to pick particular ones out of a myriad of images is influenced by our outlooks, or more specifically, our political outlooks. It is this outlook that leads to the presence of many of the past or present political events or settings in his drawings. Through those drawings, or rather through the compilation of those images in his drawings, Wang Haichuan dug deep into the proper thinking or outlooks that contemporary generation ought to have towards the present society. In other words, what makes art modern lies in its capacity for prompting assessment and thinking on the living environment of mankind.

Wang Hichuan, Feb.6

Acrylic on Tibetan paper

25.5x37.5cm, 2020

With his adept mastery of drawing techniques and by taping into the structure of Japanese Ukiyoe, Chinese folk drawing and Persian miniature, Wang Haichuan was able to introduce to his Tibetan paper drawing a new style different from the common schematic style drawing, bringing rich fragmented stories to the audience. 

“For me, images have their special significance in defining things. We are living in a time riddled with images and the images you chose will come to define your outlook on the world. Because of the sense of boredom that comes with schematization and the sense of “transparency” that the audience may feel, I try to steer clear of being rigid in my drawing. By combining various images, I was able to create many stories that cannot otherwise be told by words to communicate with the audience. In a sense, I have retained a touch of the reading characteristic of illustrated books, turning those drawings into my “modern Ukiyo-e” - Wang Haichuan

Wang Hichuan, Feb.12

Acrylic on Tibetan paper

25.5x37.5cm, 2020

Cao Yebo is a young artist born in Zhangjiakou, Hebei Province in 1993. He graduated from Hebei Normal University with a master's degree in 2020. As an emerging artist, he already has some exhibition experience, such as The First Illustration Exhibition in China and The First College Students Art Fair in Shanghai.

Chameleon By Cao Yebo

The clown was designed based on my own prototype. He has confused and ignorant eyes because he has too many doubts and puzzles to the world. The corners of his mouth are raised with a smile because he wants to be optimistic and brave to face reality. The clown's world is always divided into two, half sunshine, half shadow, half happiness, and half desolation.  Isn't it true for each of us? Sadness or happiness may only be understood in your own heart. Perhaps happiness is just a dream, but sadness is reality. Life is like a drama but don't fool life. May we seek peace in the noisy and restless world, be sensible and nothing to fear.

Empty Room By Cao Yebo

Tarantula By Cao Yebo

Light Of The Heart By Cao Yebo

Hangover By Cao Yebo

Silent Night By Cao Yebo

Human nature and emotion are the topics I have always been interested in. In real life, their falsehood and reality, purity and chaos have always troubled me and attracted me to explore the truth.

Darling, That's not Love By Cao Yebo