Zhao Xiaodong has always used peasant workers at the bottom of the society, flowing from city to city, country to country, as his subjects. This group of people, although doing physical labor that urban residents are least willing to do, do not have access to the social security and welfare enjoyed by their urban fellows. The urban and rural gap created by market economy has changed their cultural identities and their psychological appeals as well, and it becomes harder for them to go back to their hometowns. These wandering proletarians are exactly what the urbanization of China shall, in its course, absorb, and for a long period of time, they will still be placed on the edge of the country and at the bottom of the city.

The concern for the people on the edge or at the bottom by Chinese art is of realistic significance, which has made Zhao Xiaodong’s paintings greatly different from those of his contemporary counterparts, some of which are looking for cultural symbols, and some of which are depicting themselves. Zhao Xiaodong, on the other hand, cares about social problems directly and bluntly, and, in this sense, he is closer to the older artists. Compare his works with the country paintings in Sichuan Fine Arts Institute, such as the paintings by Luo Zhongli, and we will discover the relations and differences between the two. Luo Zhongli’s focus is on the peasants. His transition from social realism in 1980’s to cultural expressionism is mainly the experience on and the expression of agricultural civilization and rural culture, although it also manifests the changes of rural life. The peasants painted by Zhao Xiaodong, whose foothold has been transferred to cities, are a group at the bottom of the society, which is being changed and has already been changed by industrial civilization and urban culture.

From the very beginning, Zhao Xiaodong has been painting peasant workers from an equal position, endowing his subjects the main position in his paintings. Compared to his earlier works, his recent works, on the premise of maintaining basic painting skills and painting features, are apparently with less depiction on props, but more emphasis on atmosphere. This is somehow related to the problem consciousness gradually emerging in his works. The indifferent and laughing lookers-on in the painting “Accident”, and the helplessness to the damages to rural ecology in “Green Mountain Still There”, all of these, with the help of the painter’s connection between subject and surroundings (subject and object), reveal the living conditions of the subjects with more truthfulness and concrete. What’s more, the painter has not substituted his own propensity for the subjects themselves, and thus avoided, to some extent, the “humanistic care” cherished by most urban artists. What Zhao Xiaodong has reflected is the true feelings of these people at the bottom: their rhapsody, their boredom and helplessness, their hard working, and their worldly pleasures. These people at the bottom have their own feelings, values of existence, moral standards, and spiritual pursuits, which could not be defined by official regulations, standards of the upper class, or the already-established criteria. It is in this non-linear, non-standard living life style that the actual needs by the human beings of the present can be reached – desire and hunger, aspiration and struggle. This is where Zhao Xiaodong’s paintings are different from the past paintings on peasants, and it is also the artistic field worth further experiencing, exploiting and reflecting.

I really appreciate Zhao Xiaodong’s perseverance and his enquiring mind. This is just a humble piece of writing about my feelings toward his works, which is still open to any further discussion.