By Art Alpha
Yang Xun belongs to the young artist who has achieved success. When he was a freshman in the Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts, people began to collect his works, and his teacher, Pang Maokun, who is now the Dean of the Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts, is also his collector. In the senior year graduation exhibition, a big show that the art circle will pay attention to, his works stand out among all kinds of outstanding young artists, which is a blockbuster.
In 2012, his solo exhibition "Journey in the Garden" made his work a hit in Beijing. People were surprised that he could find such a mature artistic language at the age of 30.
From Chongqing to Heiqiao in Beijing, Yang Xun at that time created in a 500-square-meter studio, receiving flowers and applause. However, at this time, he was caught in a crisis of creation. He demanded perfection and wanted to make greater breakthroughs, but he became numb to everything and lost interest. Different voices began to appear from the outside world, which intensified his confusion.
After years of silence, Yang Xun was searching, repairing, and even rebuilding himself. Starting from the gardens in "A Dream in the Garden", in Yang Xun's paintings, there is always a beam of light that runs through the creation. This light is power and an outlet for the soul. The series of "Flowers" is his emergence again. The "light" in the picture is still there, and he sees it as the origin of everything. "Flower" allowed him to return to stability from a floating state, and he has gradually become better along the way. In recent years, his creation series include "sea", "fluorescent bamboo" and "stone". The artistic language has become clearer and more mature, and his heart seems to be able to Carry more.
On October 31st, Yang Xun's latest solo exhibition "Bamboo Shadows in the Spring Garden" opened at Taipei Unlimited Art Center, exhibiting his newly created "Bamboo" series. In this exhibition, what we see is a calm and mature Yang Xun who has shown himself more artistically.
From a young age to a difficult bottleneck period
People have known Yang Xun’s work from the exhibition "A Dream in the Garden" in 2012. The works in this exhibition reflect the artist’s superb artistic control ability, as well as his very personal understanding of Chinese history and culture and man-made gardens. Self-confidence.
Yang Xun, in his early 30s, has found a very mature way of artistic expression. This exhibition is highly regarded by the outside world. At that time, Yang Xun had moved to Beijing and rented a 500-square-meter studio in the Heiqiao Art District. The courtyard alone was more than 100 square meters.
Everyday Yang Xun comes out of the bedroom upstairs and sits on the sofa, watching the shadow of the sun in the morning until the evening. Either lie down for a day like Ge Youtan, or drink tea in the yard. "During this time, I was completely lost. In fact, at that time, I couldn't carry such a large space, nor could I carry such a space to express myself. This was consuming myself. The recognition from the outside made me a little scared and deterred. I don’t know how to proceed." Later he realized that praise or admiration had become a burden. For a period of time, Yang Xun was completely unable to create and had no curiosity about the world. He once joked that his "middle-age crisis" came earlier than others.
The high demands on himself made him no longer satisfied with painting around the "garden dreams", and came out with a single mind, even if it was no problem to continue the previous theme creation at that time. "My ability and experience, including the understanding of history, and the understanding of contemporary painting, can no longer go inside. "Garden" has become a barrier for me. If I paint it again, I will just repeat it. One style, there can be no breakthrough." At that time, there was a fresh trend in Chinese contemporary art, and new interests were emerging. Yang Xun's style of painting with a little bit of video seemed to be a little marginal, which intensified his self-doubt.
Regain confidence from the flower series
Yang Xun hopes to completely abandon everyone's inherent impression of him before and improve himself with a new look. This has gone through quite a while.
The "Flower" series, from incubation to emergence, takes longer than people think. Yang Xun has been working on this theme since 2006, but at the beginning it only stayed on the surface, such as in the paintings of Song Dynasty. Try round, or express a distant memory in black and white. From 2014, Yang Xun began to try to take out the begonia, magnolia, apricot blossom, and bamboo in the studio garden separately, and re-present them as a main clue. He began to observe the growth, color and vitality of the flowers themselves. Gradually, he painted more and more brightly, expressing its redness with 10 times more than the original color of the flowers.
From 2014 to 2019, the slow process of creating the "Flower" series was also a process for Yang Xun to repair himself and rebuild his confidence.
The light that appears in the center of the flower is another new understanding of the light in the "Amusement Park" series. The light of dreaming in the garden is a time tunnel and a reminder of dreams, and it also has the effect of reminiscing about the years of life. Yang Xun described the light in the dream of the garden in this way: "Many people looked at the garden and said that you painted the dark night? I said no, what I painted is normal, but I can’t see a lot of things, not that my eyes can’t see it. The heart can’t see it, and it always feels like something is hidden. This state of inaccessibility requires a medium. Light is this medium, and it needs light to shine and see." And this kind of light that runs through Yang Xun's creation occurs when Huaxin, and its meaning is essentially different from that of "Wandering in the Garden". The light gives the flower the beginning of vitality. In the background of the painting, there are many light spots scattered in the state of emptiness. The more light spots become in the later stage of creation.
A flower in full bloom can also be anything else in full bloom. Through the flowers, Yang Xun describes life and hope.
In the five years of painting flowers, the flowers he painted became more and more colorful and brilliant, and finally looked like fireworks. In fact, this is a state of extreme desire and need in his heart, which naturally presents such a picture. This also allowed Yang Xun to repair himself and return to his confidence.
Completed the mentality upgrade from the bamboo series
From flowers to bamboo, Yang Xun is even more calm and calm. Bamboo's two series "Huahuo" and "Yingzhu" still follow the main line of his creation, which is to talk to tradition and literati. The so-called tradition in the work is presented in a contemporary atmosphere. This is also the question that Yang Xun pondered when he created the two series: How to express a contemporary feeling when expressing something that the public and literati love to express? Can I use my light to express its vitality and soul.
The light spots on each bamboo joint are like the tree of life in the Avatar, and also like the blood vessels of a person, full of vitality. Like Huaxin, it is the origin of life and also represents the future.
"I hope that my painting is not the object itself, but transmits a kind of energy. Although it is carried by the object, it may be a kind of energy of the universe, which is very powerful. And when people watch the work, they can exchange energy. , Get a different experience. "From the flower to the bamboo, Yang Xun completed his energy upgrade, completed a process of self-interpretation and growth.
"I have become extremely confident now. When I was still painting flowers two years ago, it was not like this. It was because of the difference in creation, my state was different, and the changes were quite big."
Everything in the stone, the sea and the curtain
Yang Xun’s current creative stage is from the macro perspective of the dialogue between the garden and history, the expression of dreams, to the use of light on the object itself, the light of the object, the light of the flower, and the light of the bamboo to express the vitality itself. From the macro view to the micro focus.
This year, the stones appearing in Yang Xun's paintings are also eye-catching. They are not like a complete stone described by the ancients, but only a part of a stone.Yang Xun understands stones.
They have neither a starting point nor an end point. Rotating them at any angle can be described. When he chooses to focus on one part to observe, he puts the continuation and diffusion of time in the picture, seeing the universe from the subtle.
Similarly, the creation of the sea also uses the simplest language, expressing the infinite temporality of water and the infinite spatial association. An undulating wave, infinitely superimposed, is not the sea, not the water itself, it is all things in the space-time universe that you can represent everything.
The same is true for the curtain. Each fold in the curtain does not just represent a barrier or occlusion. It also has no beginning and no end, just like a wave, like a cycle of time, each point is a turning point, an infinite loop. In, can enclose a space.
"I think in the final analysis, I want to describe the essence of all things as an infinite superposition. Only infinite superposition can form energy and form all things themselves."
Being an artist makes me very satisfied
Why choose to paint? Yang Xun has never had a second answer to this question.
"My favorite is still being an artist. Needless to say. Painting can give me a very solid feeling, and it will make you quiet and very comfortable. After finishing a work, there will definitely be pleasure in the moment, other things cannot instead." When he finds the flowers he wants to express, as well as bamboo and stones, which are particularly in line with his heart, it is the happiest time. The stone he likes is full of lines and full of details. When there is no more to add in the picture, it is really finished. The pleasure of this time is the joy of being an artist.
"I think I have been operating in the small universe of the picture every day for the past two months, and in the end I really painted something beyond these two months. This is enough. The profession of a painter will make me special. Satisfaction."
Another particular attraction of this profession is that the greatest happiness of an artist is that his works may be left behind, and people 100 years later will be able to see it, and recall how this person understood the world at that time. Why does he paint like that. This is something that other professions cannot replace.
My current feeling is that it’s still early. After all, I have only painted for more than ten years. For an artist, it’s actually a relatively short period of time. I think I can go down in the past, and there is still a lot of energy. Take it out, you can play. "
Yang Xun was born in Chongqing in 1981 and graduated from the Oil Painting Department of Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts in 2005. He currently lives and works in Beijing. The relationship between Yang Xun's painting and tradition is inextricably linked but rationally restrained. In his paintings, there are gardens, opera characters, rockery and running water, flowers and so on. His work seems to be trying to revive a certain tradition, especially in aesthetics. His works carry a breath that does not belong to his age and era, and are called the representatives of the younger generation of "New Oriental Aesthetics".
Yang Xun’s important solo exhibitions in recent years include: "Spring Garden Bamboo Shadows" (Taipei), "Weiyuan Tuzhi" (Shanghai), "Lingguang" (Beijing), "One Heart Fire" (Taipei), "Quiet·Qi" "(Beijing), "Jingmeng in the Garden" (Beijing), "Amnesia" (Beijing, Singapore, Malaysia), "At That Moment That Light" (Seoul, South Korea), "Jingmeng" (Beijing); etc. Yang Xun’s works have also been featured in art museums around the world, such as the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow, the Asian Art Museum in Nice, France, the Czech National Art Gallery, the Santa Monica Art Center in Spain, the National Art Gallery of Indonesia, and Fukuoka Asia Art Museum, Today Art Museum, etc. participated in the exhibition. Public collection institutions include: He Xiangning Art Museum, Chengdu Modern Art Center, Shanghai Art Museum, Suzhou Art Museum, Shenzhen Art Museum, Jining Art Museum, Yuz Art Museum, Sifang Art Museum, Qiao Space, BMW China, Urs Miele.
Exhibition view of Yang Xun's "Bamboo Shadow in Spring Garden" at Ben Fun Art
Yang Xun "Spring Garden Bamboo Shadow" exhibition information
Yang Xun
The Spring Garden and Shadow of Bamboo
Exhibition time | 2020.10.31-2020.12.30
Exhibition location | No. 242, Section 2, Tiding Avenue, Zhongshan District, Taipei City
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