China’s realities not only sufficiently remind us of the splendid Chinese culture and history, but also make us realize the importance of the so-called China’s ‘DI QI',(it means being closely related with the reality, and with the ordinary people in English), which is exactly based on it, and has left a huge impact on our daily life. The widely attention won by today's China is neither the result of the geographical differences, nor of its splendid past history, but from its intensively large and radical fission which has never before occurred. This radical change in China can only be gradually absorbed and transformed into some constructive factors in the future world. Reality is so close to us and has such an impending effect that we have no time to stop, to have a rest, and to take a little moment to think about it. 

Luckily, to a certain extent, artists can do this! Artists' job is to allow time to become solidified, for they can use their talents to create immortal works to let the beauty stay! They use the artistic eyes, artistic methods, and artistic approaches to present the realities and let them last forever, to make us breath visible, and to let our thoughts be heard. “Plum Flower Patterns”,with its long and unbroken scenery delicately made, seems to be the ancient sight, and shows us a lyrical world; however, what Zhang Xiaotao really wants to demonstrate through it is the tragic effect on us by the cruel reality. Superficially, it is as splendid as the full-blood plum flower, but the cruel tragic life story it really reveals is well worthy of our deep thought.  Isn't this helpless contrast a kind of grimly whimsical? 

The true art is not made of its own beauty, but of its essence; without the presence of flesh and skeleton, where is it possible for the skin to exist? This is true for the real art, for the true are is not made of its own superficial beauty, but of its essence!  Today's art could be completely separated from the reality, but could not avoid being connected with the essence of the true reality. "Reality", in the context of Chinese, has abundant meaning, rich and subtle, complex and direct; it is not only concerned with politics, but also involves human relations; it embodies both the emperor's strategy, and ordinary people's disorder. Use Plum Blossom to hint obliquely at the reality, the author attempts to make the complex reality artistic, revealing world 's wilderness through wrongly constituting the visual phantoms.

*image (left)
© Zhang Xiaotao 
courtesy of the artist and White Box Museum of Art