PANG Maokun was born in Chongqing in 1963. He currently acts as the Vice President of Sichuan Fine Arts Institute. He is also the Executive Director of Chongqing Art Museum, Vice Chairman of the Chongqing Artists Association, President of Chongqing Painting Academy, Advisory Board Member at the China Artists Association, Member of the China and Artists Association Oil Painting Council, and Advisory Board Member at the China Oil Painting Society. His representative works include Apples are Ripe, The Rainbow is Silently Above, A Golden Summer, the Blur Series, the Virtual Time Series, the Coincidence Series, and the Shining Brightly Series. The exhibition of PANG’s works at Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts is indeed an overseas extension of his solo exhibition that was held in 2013 at the National Art Museum of China, Beijing. In this exhibition, PANG is going to present to the public 18 of his latest oil paintings, and 24 of his manuscripts and drafts.
Distinctly realistic in style, PANG’s oil paintings nevertheless set themselves apart from traditional Realism by their aesthetic qualities that convey metaphorical connotations as well as by their philosophical features that inspire sober reflection on the unseen part of human life. What also tells them apart is the way in which PANG rationalizes his concerning issues into the realistic representation on canvas. It is a dual transcendence that PANG has devoted himself to—to break through the limits that traditional realism and the avant-garde texts encounter. He attempts to shed off the noxious dependence that pure realism has form in pursuit of accurate depiction of things. So does he endeavor to keep himself from straying into the textual labyrinth that the avant-garde art tends to build. He therefore endows his realistic works with unsettling narratives that undermine the sure reality. The oxymoronic presentation in his works stings the viewers into a sudden realization that there in truth exists a wide gap between themselves and the reality.
In his new works, PANG continues his constant keen perception of the first experience. Through destructive subjective colors, he rearranges images and gives them autonomy by using scenes happen in reality, such as coincidences, bits and pieces in daily life, and all kinds of events. He confronts the viewers with different moments in real life in a fragmentary but synchronic way. In a grain of sand, the viewers see a world; in lightness, solemnness. His works abound in subjective artistic intellectuality and are rich in techniques of creative performance. Apart from overstressing the construction of social and historical meaning of artworks, he brings himself closer to an existence of sensibility, a life that synchronizes the prosaic and opaque daily triviality. On his canvas, he presents the increasingly diverse, chaotic but rich and prosperous life, showing the world a life that is pungent, direct, but rich and vivid.
On seeing his works, we do not find a vociferous society; nor do we feel subjective anxiety or anger. Instead, we see and construct the meanings of his works. The meanings conveyed are not to be perceived on the superficial side of society. Rather, they inhere in humanity and the natural flesh of life, showing the peculiar conditions of human existence and the natural colors of life. PANG as a creating subject invests people, gatherings or natural scenes with intellectual reasoning and “meanings.” His aspiration for reaching out of oil painting for a “virtual” reality reveals his attempts to highlight in an abstract way the “uncertainty” and “dramatic” aspects of life, and the ceaseless changes that constantly escape human grasp.
*image (left)
The Taste of Laoying Tea, 2013
painting, 180x280cm
courtesy of the artist
