The enigmatic language by the body
By Zhao Li

Body
For quite a long time, the body has been deemed as under the umbrella of material substance. The body has been one part of the material world and the physical existence, which occupies time and space and at the same time is subject to physical principle. In contrast, the spirit has been under the umbrella of the other substance, which only occupies time but do not conform to physical principle. As a matter of fact, the binary separation of the body from the spirit leads to the difficult binary situation where the material world, which exists both in time and space, and the spirit, which does not take up space, are not capable of transforming into each other in a specific and given person. This has been a problem, which not only entails great effort made by the philosophy to deal with but also may be the subject matter that the artist would like to touch upon. Many of the paintings made by Li Xiaoqi concentrate on the description of the body. Despite of the fact that the painter has always been wittily write down directly the quite weird names of the paintings on the canvas and the fact that there exists certain direct echo between those names of the paintings and the scenes depicted by the painter, the pictorial presentation of the body has seemed yet to be some constant rhythm in those paintings. Maybe in real life, just like Nietzsche, Li Xiaoqi holds “believing in the body has more fundamental meaning than believing in the spirit”. However, in art creation, the artist chooses to make use of the so-called pictorial presentation of the body to express the existing manner of the body in the world. In the same way, in his creation, the pictorial presentation of the body by Li Xiaoqi has never been merely still at the superficial stage, but of a kind of concrete unity: the body and the parts constituting of it take on the inherent and complex interacting effect, influence each other and make up an organic whole; while the meaning of an organic whole is adhered to as the base, the dynamic integrated activity is carried on of the body and the external environment. In other words, the external environment where the body exists is considered as the activity field of it and based on this the dynamic integrated activity, the external environment takes on some new special meaning and the kind of space is neither the depth of field nor the composition layout in the ordinary sense, but a situational space where the body and the environment are integrated with each other into a whole; at the same time, more meanings and categories are generated due to the fact that the relationship between the body and the environment are always subject to the construction and reconstruction and because of the adjustment from time to time. The body, as the dominant role in the creation by Li Xiaoqi stands out for its actions and purposes in different space and for its predominance in the situational space, and takes initiative to start the “significance fields” in space and time, which belongs exclusively to itself. These special “significance fields” the rich orientation and implications created by Li Xiaoqi making use of the pictorial presentation of the body under discussion, by the precipitation and accumulation of which a set of meaningful system will be derived little by little, which not only covers the past but also looks forward to the future.     
The enigmatic language
The enigmatic language has also been known as “enigmatic”, the ancient character of which is “hidden langue”, which is one of the ways to call a riddle in ancient times. The Literary Mind and Carving of Dragons gives definition of the enigmatic language as “on the surface of the word , the meaning is hidden and take a closer look, the reference is got ”.. As a result, the enigmatic language is the language which hidden the original object and borrow other words to imply it. In general, the enigmatic language is classified into three types, which are respectively code, intelligence measurement and obscure remonstrance. The paintings made by Li Xiaoqi can be understood in the same manner. Code is the most fundamental form of the enigmatic language, which appears to depend on some seemingly popularly accepted signals and codes to transmit the specific implication which means something exclusively to the other party.  In the Erected Middle Finger, the ordinary people are still what they are even when endowed with the wings of the angel. His erected middle finger seems to be the gesture of cursing. However, in fact his middle finger twisted by cloth stripes is intended to exhibit his trauma so as to express “he is already seriously wounded”. Intelligence measurement can somewhat be compared to riddle guessing, which entails a certain level of intelligence to the actual original meaning by “use one word as an analogy of another one”. Cutting the braided hair merely refers to the action of cutting the braided hair itself?! Is what Li Xiaoqi has done to “the old adherent” in old fashioned appearance a kind of “salvation” or a certain kind of murder to accelerate his death? Besides, who on earth is the old adherent? Is he the tradition, the convention, the reflection of his own life or the lingering fragments of memory, which is hard to erase? Remonstrance is the obscure language which was used by courtiers to recommend their own thoughts and ideas in the past. However, it is used by Li Xiaoqi to allude to a king of hint and warning to the mortals. Conspiracy is by no means what is known to the heaven, the earth, you or me any more. All the “standers-by” will be involved in the conspiracy and play the role of “accomplice”. In this sense, the “secret conspiracy” becomes a “open conspiracy” and in Prey, “murder” is equal to “suicide” in the sense that probably your prey has already changed you into its own prey. It has to be admitted that whether it is code, intelligence measurement or obscure remonstrance, the so-called optical reading rendered by the observer is indispensible, and the enigmatic language not only has the clear direction in content and even the property of the era’s stigma. 

Expression
In the pictorial era as it is nowadays, the pure and liberal way of painting has already been rendered a certain different, special, completely new type by the overwhelming duplication. Since the creation by Li Xiaoqi just has done the opposite of what the whole era wants, it deserves our respect in the present lingual context. That painter, the painter himself or herself has to focus back onto the painting itself is what Li Xiaoqi would like to do most. Li Xiaoqi pay more attention to the expression of the subjective feeling, particularly emphasizing the survey of the inner field of view and making every effort to advocate the inner experience and the spiritual passion. Since the fact is that the painter rejects those fake and surface realities, whereas he or she demands to exhibit more real existence than what the eyes are able to reach in daily life, Li Xiaoqi takes the present as the base to dig out the feeling of the inner mind and to advocate passion, which constitutes “the main line of the plot” and at the same time leads to the disturbance, conflict and terror, which allegorically present the contemporary people’s inner loneliness and terror when faced with the great changes in the society. The creation by Li Xiaoqi has combined hallucination, dreamland, illusion and twisted and deformed technique, which can be taken as derived from the source of the modern masters in the western world, while what is derived from other source has the tendency of the eastern mysticism and writing abstraction. As a result of it, his works has strong symbolic implication. In the works by Li Xiaoqi can be easily found the arbitrarily used language of novelty, peculiar model, intentional dismembering and repeated deformation, which has developed into the tense and urgent rhythm. It is the pictorial rhythm special to Li Xiaoqi and also his personal methodology of “he does not look but observe; he does not describe but experience; he does not pick up but build up; he does not pick up but grope ” .