Curator: ZHAO Yonggang & Irina PAVLOV
Opening Reception: Mar 8 2009 (Sun) 3 - 7pm

Curatorial statement by Irina PAVLOV
 
Painting is the offspring of an integral effort which comprises physical and mental strength of every particular part of the body. It includes an absolute stamina and intellectual entity that one artist must possess. Each and every painting is a distilled outcome defined by elaborate process that involves upper and lower limbs, as the mediums of what artist’s senses feel and mind demonstrates. In this particular sense, painting and dancing have obvious analogous traits. Such a trait is found in the traces and tracks on a canvas, which are themselves movements recorded in time and space. This movement is a kind of repetitive ritual activity whose engine lies in energy inside of an artist’s mind and body. Successive alternations of layers of colors or meticulous brush strokes that focused on details are implemented through the air flow present in each movement. An artist spends hours painting while breathing in paint fumes as if they were vital juices renewing the energy and inspiration coming from within.
 
Abstract painting takes this inspiration and adds an obvious mental aspect to the experience. Abstract paintings, unlike any other form of paintings, have that unique quality of denuding shapes and forms into their original “non-shape” form. By de-objectification of visual references of the world, we are offered a space so vast in its breadth that it becomes quite complex to “read” what is being “written” within the paintings. Abstract paintings have their own visual linguistic structure created by visual decomposition of the world as we know it. This ultimately leads us to another correlation between painting and writing. Namely, painting and writing are two performative actions that are again linked by body movement in a desire to leave traces on a surface as a personal creation signed by the artist. Limbs are simply “following” the inner rhythm of the abstraction.
 
Following this rhythm, SHEN Chen (b. 1965), HE Peng (b. 1971) and YANG Liming (b. 1975) have created a whole new prospect on abstract paintings. This rhythm, this “shimmering”, has channeled and defined the air flow that oscillates among each individual brush stroke. Their paintings are the product of what the abstract energy looks like when it is shaped by the strong essence of Chinese contemporary cultural and social matrix.
 
 In the creativity process of SHEN Chen, HE Peng and YANG Liming, time is everything.
 
SHEN Chen is “talking” through the medium of layering colors. When he grounds his canvases, his brush strokes represent a kind of labor that is being reiterated perpetually. Layer by layer, color by color, stroke by stroke. And somehow, the more he paints the less effort can be seen, due to the innumerous washes of gray tones that are almost transparent and are drowning into each other. Being devoted to that process, repetition in painting is a kind of religion to him. This almost meditative form of applying paint gives his compositions quality of calmness and slowness, where painting becomes something organic, almost alive.
 
HE Peng spends hours depicting thousands of spots and tracks of contemplation. When breathing in the atmosphere from his bright colored canvases, one can feel continuum of movement born in the process of artist’s self-forgetfulness. It is a pure and clean, almost sterile feeling of absolute inner fulfillment. One can track He Peng’s thoughts direction by following those tiny little spots, which are the smithereens of meditation process. By portraying personal dots, He Peng is leaving only echoes. However, under closer inspection, these echoes uncover much from the past, such as memories, experiences, and previous lives.
 
In comparison, YANG Liming’s works are “read” as books full of running lines. Those lines are his writings of personal stories. Every story takes time to be created. And it is not just the time utilized by Yang Liming while he paints. It is the time occupied by the observer as well. It is time to approach and comprehend those writings. This is because those lines are now not just lines. They are EKG lines, lines of heart beating, lines of life. Yang Liming is so absorbed into those lines that he spends whole quasi-eternity dimensioning them. Or perhaps it would be better and truer to say that those writings are dimensioning Yang Liming. He is merely following their dictation and searches for their final arrangement deep down in the cosmos of dark moods and feels dwelling on his paintings.
 
Works of SHEN Chen, HE Peng and YANG Liming share a spatial relationship on different levels. One is the physical dimension of the canvases. Their sizes simply overwhelm us and keep our attention constituting an event which determines phenomenological effect of the works as a whole. Apart from the complexity of the chromatic and graphic elements which they display, their paintings also assert a seductive power that is exercised upon us. Those vast spaces are talking to us through different colors, forms and compositions. The surfaces themselves are only hints of the paintings and stories that lie underneath. It is due to this that we are constantly going back to them; because through them we are not only discovering their meanings, we are discovering ourselves as well.