Gazing at Himself
—— On Cheng Yong’s Paintings

By Lin Mingzhe, the President of Mountain Art Foundation

I could see strong attempt to seek the inner world of the painters of the new generation from Cheng Yong’s paintings. It has been thirty years since the Sichuan Fine Arts Academy grows up in painting circles and the realist style of oil painting has experienced great transformation. The emotionally shocking artistic characteristics common in Father (1980) by Luo Zhongli has been changed obviously, and we could find quite different elaboration in Cheng Yong’s artworks.

In front of the fast developing and seething society, the artists express the mental conditions of the modern people with an immersed sense in a new perspective, which is the so-called epochal character. The painters of the new generation have broken away from the open, grand and magnificent spirit and features of the time which are typical in Father and tend to express some inner and gloomy emotions. A brand new epochal atmosphere has come into the major preference for young artists’ creation.

Communications among Different Fields is a typical painting to understand Cheng Yong’s art. It’s easy to recognize the painter as the figure in the painting; Cheng Yong places two bodies of him naked in the bathroom. The one looking outside is looking at somewhere unknown to avoid the eyes contact with the audience, while the one looking inside shows us his bottom as he is urinating. Since bathroom is a private place, the intention to use it as the scene of the painting with the artist inside is confusing. However, the artist is not intended to satisfy our peeping mania nor show his exhibitionism, as he’s good at dodging away from trap of erotica. It’s a pure gazing at himself. All of the male figures in Cheng Yong’s paintings are himself, like in The City, Extension, Townscape, Tower, Pain in Missing, etc. Getting himself into the paintings, Cheng Yong is exploring his own existence and his real interior in the present time through gazing into himself.

“I’m sensitive to catch emotions like tender feelings and oppression and prefer to express in a mild way. In the modern metropolis of great prosperity and clamor, there are calm and simple flavor under the mighty pop storm, and what I’m doing is to find and express them. The modern popular culture offers people the exciting pleasure non-stop for 24 hours, which people are indulging in yet often find them confusing. With the arouse of self-consciousness, it seems that people are eager to break all kinds of shackles”. This is the ainter’s monologue towards creation. In the painting, he’s always alone, refiguring himself in some déjà vu corner of reality with some kind of soliloquize, while the pasty complexion and cold landscapes speak out all the private feelings of the modern people. Being placed in the contemporary conditions, the people are no longer simple and relaxed, but with a strongly depressed sense of alienation.

There is mostly one figure in Cheng Yong’s painting. Besides himself, there’s also a female figure with long hair easily seen in his paintings, like Dream, Renaissance, Stealing the Green, Paralysis, etc. She is curling up like a cocoon, with which it seems that she’s trying to block the clamor of reality so as to hide herself into her inner world. It might be another metamorphosis of the painter. Even though there are more than one character in the paintings, such as Pieces and On the Spatial Parallelism, Inversion and Overlap, each goes his own way and never talks to another; the paintings show scenes of daily life, yet a solitude and cold world. Growing up in the 20th century, Cheng Yong has enjoyed the rich material life brought by the economic development from 1980s, but at the same time feels a strong sense of cultural anxiety. The more flourishing the atmosphere is, the more lonely and hesitant he is, the slight message of which could be tracked from his paintings.

Cheng Yong considers himself of great enthusiasm towards realist oil painting as well as addiction and persistence. He unfolds his world with realist oil paintings, while his solid realistic skills bring his artworks more convincing. He says in his autobiography, “For the past few years, I have been trying hard to combine the modern cultural phenomenon with local traditional culture into a whole disposition, which is common in my artworks because I consider it an essence beyond the paintings and sympathetic to the audiences. In this way, I take the oil painting from a western art form into expression of my own way of thinking and feeling.” It is the “essence beyond the paintings” that makes his paintings touching. After many years of study, what is amazing in his painting is not the superior technique, but the aesthetics and spirits extracted from it. There is a touching power in his art present with his vivid expression, amazing and catching, which highlights the unique advantages of art. The seemingly simple expression is actually punching us with the sense of loneliness, anxiety and hesitation.

He says, “The techniques should be employed with the artist’s mind and blood rather than as the mere skills and dogmatic inflexibility.” Cheng Yong made it in his paintings. With acuity to listen to his heart, he expresses in art the circumstances of the new times and his own opinions with confidence, which represents the ideological conditions of new times. It’s a new road of the young generation, different from the art of the older generation like Luo Zhongli.

Born in 1983, Cheng Yong graduated from the Oil Painting Department in Luxun Academy of Fine Arts in 2006 and won the Luo Zhongli Scholarship with Net in the same year. He’s the typical example of the youngest generation in the modern art circles. Cheng Yong was only 23 years old when I first met him, which allows me to observe the growing of the young artist with a close-up view; and with him, I have also had the chance to know the young artists’ ways of thinking and thoughts. Cheng Yong is in his prime and has a promising future. With his current bright achievements as the solid foundation, his future is more worth expecting.

About the artist:

Cheng Yong

1983 
Born in Liaoning
2006
Graduated from Luxun Academy of Fine Art

Solo Exhibition
2010
 “Morning Glory” Exhibition of Cheng Yong at 798 Mountain Art & Frank Lin Art Center

Group Show
2004
 “Pond” participate in the 10th annual oil painting exhibition at Liaoning Exhibition Center
 “Melancholy” participate in the 5th Annual
Youth Art Festival at Luxun Academy of Fine Art
2005
 “Red Carpet” participate in the 1st Annual Liaoning Undergraduate Artist Show at Luxun Academy of Fine Art
 “Time Goes By” participate in the 1st Annual Undergrate Artist Show at Beijing World Art Museum
 “All About Design and Space” participate in the Biennial Chengdu Art Exhibition at Chengdu Modern Art Museum
2006
 “Interaction of Different Realms” participate in the College Cup Art Exhibition
 “Web”and others participated in the exhibition for Luo Zhongli Art Scholarship
2007
 “Invisible Dust” paticipate in the Chinese Contemporary Masters Exhibition at the Beijing Capital Museum
2008 
“Go China” Contemporary Chinese Artist at 798 Mountain Art & Frank Lin Art Center
2009
“North!” Contemporary Young Artist at Weilan Art Museum, Shen Yang.
11th National Art Exhibition, at Museum of Industrial Art
“10 Years of Luxun Academy of Fine Art” Works From the Graduated Student at Luxun Academy of Fine Art