We can find many photos, videos or audios of our past in our cameras, cellphones, recorders and computers. Although we are the creator of these memories, we cannot really keep them in our brain. All that left is just a huge cloud of vague mist.
Key words: Memory, Fluidity, Fragment, Moment
The Ephemera
As time goes by, our memory is broken to pieces, which were scattered everywhere. I often check the photos and videos in my phone and realized that I can hardly remember the details of what have happened without these photos or videos. During this process, I often got astonishing feedbacks: “oh, yes, I’ve seen this before”, “when did it happen?” and “it was so funny”, and so on. I realized that, with the development of science and economy, people are used to remember their life through electronic products and they remember because they need to. It seems that thinking and making choices are no longer so important. As the book Memory mentioned that, "The sadness of the Machine."
In this work, I used a lot of small wood blocks and painted traditional oil paints on these blocks. Some wood blocks were put together, while some were separated. This time I used my block faces which were not restricted in one picture but spread out. The lines were rough and sharp, which can arouse audience’s maximum imagination. At the beginning, I painted a layer of colorful paints on each block, then I painted light and transparent colors layer by layer, until it comes the last layer of transparent white. The bottom color was covered but still loomed through the lines and layers, and a balance was achieved.
The works were placed on the wall, as they were floating in a blank space.
Still Life
The works in this series were inspired from a vintage market that I once visited. An article in the book Memory mentioned that, “Our physical surroundings bear our and other's imprint. Our home -- furniture and its arrangement, room decor -- recalls family and friends whom we see frequently within this framework.” (Memory,Ian Farr, 2012, P.47).
I saw many antique cups, vases and bowls in the market. They were no longer new but rusted and dim covered with a film of dust and were piled on a table which formed a quiet and still society. We may know where and when they were produced. But we don’t know is that what memories they carry. It is amazing to know the taste and hobby of people from many years ago. Endowed with temperature and depths, the cold articles were featured with life given by handling and time. I also adopted small-sized painting frames for this work. The elements in this work include the edges of the objects, the arc, the enlarged details and the block face. Multi-layer transparent colors were used for looming bottom color, and borders were highlighted. Time is the dust, which covered the memory, the original color of an object as well as the whole picture. But you can still vaguely know the original look of it.
I Slipped in the Snow
The inspiration of this work comes from a snowy workday in London when I slipped on my way to college.
After I slipped, I only remembered my hurting ass and how I felt dizzy and embarrassed. The next day when I was on the same way to college, I realized how beautiful that the snowy Wimbledon was. That was my first time seeing such thick snow in London. Everything was white. The snow-laden iron stand and flowers, and the trash can blown down by wind were all very cute. When making this work, I painted several oil painting frames whose lengths were less than 25cm with different bottom colors. Then, the specific things were simplified, abstracted and transformed in order to leave designs and colors that can be easily remembered.
I thought I have forgotten the day. But in fact, it has been incorporated into my blood.
People think that history has been sealed. However, it just showed as a heavy breath that was still respected by later generations.
​
I want to close my eyes and empty my mind temporarily, but my mind just keeps running on and on.
Keywords: Circulation, Scenery, Lines, Space, Repetition
Three Primary Colors
​
In the beginning, I didn’t think much about the subject of this series of painting. Sudden inspirations made me infatuated with the feelings, and I even couldn’t carry away. With my direct feelings put in the first place, I enjoyed myself in my own world and didn’t even know it.
Then, on summer vacation, I returned my hometown, where I lived for a dozen years, is a remote village surrounded by multiple ranges of hills with a small river passing by. I suddenly noticed that the surrounding scenery is so similar to my subject of painting. And it dawned on me that I have lost this part of memory when I grew up and studied abroad by myself. But I have got them back through my painting.
​
I have a strong feeling to keep the undergoing atmosphere, including the distant mountains, the transparent and different shades and colors of fog, as well as the hazy light casted from over the mountains, although I am not sure from which direction they came from. I want to planarize the invisible, transparent and erratic atmosphere of the whole space, which can be “kept” and recurred in “another space (my painting).” In these oil paintings, mountains are made to transparent planes and are overlapped one by one, with warm colors glimmering from the bottom. Besides, the shapes of the mountains were outlined with sharp, explicit and different dimensions of lines.
As far as I can see, in the long and short history of mankind, the thickness, dimensions, precision and combination methods of lines are constantly added, deleted and arranged. However, no matter how the technology and art theories develop, the simplest lines are always with us: the arrangement of cells, encircling of genes, drafts and scaling of designs, as well as fluctuation of ECG.
From Dawn to Dark
​
​
This work is made for Crypt Exhibition. The underground gallery’s mottled walls and staggered corridors replaced my memories of so-called overground contemporary white space.
My work for this exhibition is a painting installation. I was inspired by the arched roof of the underground gallery and the lines of human bodies. The rhythms and circles brought by the lines helped me express the mobility and transformation of vitality as well as the temporary fading and recurring of memories. I also gained a lot of inspirations from daily life, and I would make some drafts with simple lines.
​
The form of the sliding door is very interesting and this form could be used about this work. Different information can be obtained when the sliding door is opening or closing. So I planned to apply the move in my paintings. I made three interrelated paintings. With the move of the paintings, different parts or the whole picture of the paintings will be presented to audiences, and the color blocks with transparent and similar lines and colors will move simultaneously, creating hidden, overlapped, or recurring images, and leaving more imaginations and thoughts to audiences.
By Boring
​
​
This art work is a device inspired by a period of suffering caused by insomnia. The instants and movements in wood workshop kept running in my mind before sleep, such as sawing planks, hammering nails, applying glues, and tightening screws. These memories were magnified and repeated in my mind mechanically, especially in sleepless nights.
​
I went to the wood workshop and made some more oil painting frames. During this period, I was repeating the same movements and remaining in same postures, using my body and muscle to record my memories. And the oil painting frames were products of these behaviors.
The significance of it in the moment of complete has been changed. Seemingly, ​the final result is different from the beginner's mind
In this place, over ten thousand kilometers away from home, I remembered a day from a long time ago that repeatedly showed up in my mind.
Key words: Museum, Urban Life, Narrow Space, Psychological States​
Something about Museum
My first visit to the British Museum was the inspiration for this work. I rolled my eyes when I first saw those ancient sculptures as if they wakened my memories suddenly. Particularly, it reminded me about my experience of drawing those sculptures every day as a beginner of fine art. At that time, I was drawing repeatedly like a robot. It was a necessary part of fundamental training.
I took a lot of pictures, including pictures of my emotions. Then, I sorted those pictures on my sketchbook by recombining, sticking and displacing the objects. And later on, I used Photoshop to edit those pictures to bring audience better visual experience. Finally, I had those pictures printed and erected on the base by one as those sculptures in the museum.
What’s interesting is that wherever I go and no matter how long it had past, new things would always remind me of my past experience, which come as a surprise of “regaining” to me.
Life in a Shoe Box
This video was prepared to the Life in a Shoe Box that focused on people who living in London in the limited narrow space.
​
I continue the element of my work which is the cardboard portrait about the image of traditional sculpture combine modern people's face. Unlike before, I put the character of the hollowed eyes, and put it into someone's backpack to carry and video the process of that.
​
The board face is another themselves in people's heart who living in urban. They spend a lot of time on the road. After the beautiful scenery and interesting things from the flash at the moment, but the brain has long been the stress of life filled with usually already tired. People gradually lose interest to the surrounding environment, become numb slowly. They just thinking about how to make more money, lead a better life.
​
The person in this video who in a hurry walk in various places, and eyes in backpack flashed all sorts of things, in the empty eyes quickly become a dim light, like the wind, gone in an instant.