Jia: Yes.

Feng: You see that man who often appears in his works. We’ve got no idea about what he’s digging under the ground. If I conclude your artworks and your status of living with the keyword “uncertainty”, then will it be enough for you to focus on the presentation of such living condition only?

Jia: We seem to move back to Square One, which is the understanding of the art of painting. Before we moved on to Liu Xiaodong, I actually missed another two painters who also influenced me greatly. When I was young, I once went an art show by Jiang Zhaohe in National Art Museum of China in which I spotted a wonderful piece of art called the Refugees. During the time when I learned Chinese painting in my early days, I wondered why people were painted so untrue in Chinese painting artworks. Later on I saw the paintings by a great master called Ren Bonian who could portray people as precisely as Ingres, or maybe even better. However, after long quest for truth, I looked at it in a reverse way that whether or not the art created by those masters can serve as the purpose or reasons for the existence of painting. Was such expression the ultimate goal of painting as a form of art? Will a piece of art that might cost a whole life of a painter in turn prove the existence of art? If art is actually unary, or if we look at in a pan-art way to view art as something spiritual, humanistic or religious, or a theological compound, will it still in turn prove the existence of art? Those are the questions hovering in my mind. I had once walked out of campus with absolute self-confidence, and dug up new themes in the society like Liu Xiaodong, hoping that one day I might also grow into an excellent realist painter who can surpass my predecessors. However, I brought myself to a halt for quite a while after that.

Feng: Because you had doubts?

Jia: That’s right. I keep asking whether artworks like these could prove the existence of art, not only at present, but well into the future.

Feng: It’s okay for you to question like that. Yet I do think what really counts is how you construct your own art after raising those questions.
Jia: I don’t think that’s just questioning. I’d prefer denying. But such saying is somewhat like Don Quixote in that others would tend to think it as nonsense. Right now I guess I could hardly figure out what it really is. Yet instead I could tell what it is not.

Feng: Then what’s that “not” part about?

Jia: In my mind, the good art in the future shall be somewhat unable to be explained. And such absence of explanation originates not in self-made conflict or suspense which leaves a status that denies explanation to be taken by a static third person.

Feng: Is there a possibility that such explanation would lead to nihilism or agnosticism?

Jia: Yes, it is possible. But in my sub-consciousness, it won’t enter the state of nihilism as long as I stay alive.

Feng: Or to be more exact, you demonstrate your agnosticism by the process of nonsense. In your Duineser Elegien, why do you portray Lenin? And why is there a lamp? Lenin is depicted in a representational way, while lamp is a ready object. How do you see such kind of using of resources?

Jia: To tell you the truth, I couldn’t explain it myself. However, in my mind, I believe the world is unary. And my works as well as my own feelings are oriented to divinity.

Feng: What’s your philosophy of life? Or what’s backing up your very existence?

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