Interview Liu Wei and Lv Shun

　　Liu Wei

　　1965: born in Beijing.

　　1989: graduated from the Printmaking Department of China Central Academy of Fine Arts

　　Personal Exhibition:

　　2004: Liu Wei “Flower” Page/Paper Works Exhibition, Urs Meile Gallery, Luzern, Switzerland

　　2001: Liu Wei Personal Exhibition, Loft Gallery, Paris, France

　　1999: Liu Wei Personal Exhibition, Jack Tilton Gallery, New York, America

　　1993: Liu Wei Personal Exhibition, Creese Gallery, Philadelphia, America

　　Lv Shun

　　1966: born in Xuzhou, Jiangsu Province

　　1990: studied in Department of Photography, Beijing Film Academy

　　1996: Grand Exhibition of Artworks by 10 Modern Chinese Artists (Shanghai)

　　2002: Oil Painting Exhibition from the Beginning of Heart (Xuzhou)

　　2003: Performance Art of Basking in the Sunlight (Nanjing)

　　Modern Oil Painting Exhibition of Time and Spatial Art

　　France Neo-Impressionism Exhibition (France)

　　Grand Exhibition of Artworks by 100 Contemporary Chinese Artists (Beijing)

　　Non-public Exhibition (798 Art Area)

　　2004: Grand Exhibition of Artworks by 100 Contemporary Chinese Artists

　　2005: The 3th“Trans China” Stanza of International Image Art, “China Speed” Sino-Israeli Image Exchange Exhibition (Documentary Film: Dog Days)

　　Industrial Action Plan (Daqing, Datong) Field Performance Art

　　France Film Festival (France) (Documentary Film: Dog Days)

　　Dashanzi International Art Festival (Critical—0, Testing Arts Center, 798 Art Area)

　　Editorial Note:

　　If one wants to embark on the art, he should have two kinds of qualities, i.e., the sensitivity to artistic phenomena and the clear thinking. Since the art has some kind of potential toxicity to soul, there is no room for maneuver in the event of addiction to it. In the journey of seeking after personal styles, the incidental opinions may be the lifelong treasures.

　　One is a representative of the post-1985 art and good at engraving, while the other one graduated from Beijing Film Academy, majoring in the photography. Two persons taking different journeys come across in the field of oil painting and become friends.

　　In spite of different styles, two intelligent persons like each other. One is good at painting grand pictures, while the other one is exposed to dangers on all sides.

　　At the first face, Liu Wei’s keeping silent indicates his clinging lust for art and distinctive behaviors. Since he takes the engraving as the semi-manufactured goods and a link of creation, he sketches and paints each engraving with endeavor and time so as to clear up the reproducibility of engraving and realize the search for a brand new art form. The trace of painting languages varying greatly is complicated and stubborn, as well as trenchant and independent. Moreover, the potential sarcasm and sense of humor exist in the figures and scenes. He frankly devotes his attention to giving advice to his painting fellows. Lv Shun, an artist of Song Village, has applied himself to the creation of oil paintings for ages and expresses the film languages by the means of painting, thus widening the stream of narration of plot language of oil painting and fulfilling the dissimilation of images and variants. Liu Wei said that each category of art is interactive. The painting is a kind of behavior and may be a sort of costly pattern of behaviors because each other can openly compare notes.

　　How time flies!

　　Oriental Art: How are both of you acquainted with each other by chance?

　　Lv Shun (short for “Mr. Lv”, hereinafter): We have known each other not for a long time. I met Liu Wei in 2000 when I came to Song Village. He is a characteristic man “playing” paints, having no skill in showing off. In those days, I worshiped him very much due to his ever-changing individual languages of painting. In the aspect of painting language, I think no artist in Song Village can exceed him.

　　Liu Wei (short for “Mr. Liu”, hereinafter): Thanks. After we become friends, I often go to the Lv Shun’s studio to enjoy paintings. His earliest works I ever saw is the series of Pleasant Sensation of Animals. At that time, his works look bad, so I frankly criticized him. I will not conceal any problems I dig out. In fact, someone may not tell him problems they detect, which brings no benefit to his future development.

　　Mr. Lv: The Pleasant Sensation of Animals is an earlier works in my career. In fact, as it were, it shows a clear clue of “Sex Theme” by the scenes of shout and bite of both sexes. It is the outburst of the original strength and a result of unconscious accumulation like the volcano. It is a combined product of desire and sexual awareness. The sculptured reflective infants, as well as the subsequent rotten flowers, have something to do with the sex. The current mutual echo of little pigs and blooms is mingled with complicated ambivalence of distress and freedom.

　　Mr. Liu: Your present works, in fact, are a continuation of sexual awareness. The rotten flowers and pink pigs are grotesque in shape and gaudy in color. Compared with the earlier works, the sexual awareness seems to be lessened to some extent and the things of aftertaste are increased. It does not means that your creation desire weakens, but turns to the “interior” things. It becomes more stable and implicit with the enhancement of weight. The impulsive sensibility is tempered to the imperturbable rationality, even somewhat boring. However, the flavor becomes intense and the works have more great momentums. The color becomes vivid and full. Moreover, you seem to search after a painting language belonging to yourself and are never satisfied.

　　Mr. Lv: Yes. I cannot be satisfied because my career started just now and every step I take will be the primary stage of final step. Therefore, I must take steps with earnestness.

　　Mr. Liu: You walk step by step with the instinct of a primitive organism, finally turning into a rational metaphor. In fact, to stand back by a step from the initial standing point is to take a single long step. Viewed from the technology, your works are more mature than those in the early stage.

　　Mr. Lv: For me, the creation of artistic works is a profession that can produce the ultra pleasant sensation. An idea may emerge suddenly. Sometimes it is captured or slips away. In general, I will wait because the appearance of language of works needs a proper breakthrough point. I expect I can intervene between sensibility and rationality and cannot go so far that I am at a loss in sensibility and annihilated in rationality. Therefore, I begin to search after a flexible means. Just as a dialogue needs a proper platform, the painting also needs a kind of keynote breath and floating space.

　　Mr. Liu: How did you enter the Song Village? What about the situations at that time?

　　Mr. Lv: At that time, I was unable to afford a house. After I removed to the new house, there was heavy snow outside and light snow inside. Moreover, the inside of house iced up. I was out of pocket and utterly destitute. I could not provide for myself. The situations were bad and I had a kind of utterly destitute feeling. Subsequently, I became an assistant cameraman to earn some money and then began to paint paintings. I did not go home in the Spring Festival because I could not afford a ticket. I was unsatisfactory with my life, having no mood in knowing what I was painting. I was even prepared to change my profession. My friend introduced me to take examinations in CCTV. One-month work remains fresh in one’s memory. I slept in the car, but could not find the mental support. Subsequently, I handed in my resignation. Wang Qingsong, a friend of mine, was engaged in the concept photography. He kindly invited me to his house. After I moved to his house, I began to paint paintings again.

　　Mr. Liu: The painting is not a simple job. The arrangement of your painting stands for the realization of religious consciousness. Do you believe in religion?

　　Mr. Lv: I think, to be accurate, I am a man having a religious belief in art. Though I graduated from Beijing Film Academy, I decide to become an artist after arriving at Song Village due to my love for art.

　　Mr. Liu: How did you get over those hard days?

　　Mr. Lv: For me, unconsciously selling works inspired me greatly. Then, I used the money to stretch tight picture frames. Moreover, I made a movie and earned some money, which were fully invested in the painting. However, at the beginning, I had no proper feeling no matter how I paint paintings. Later, I began to read the history of art in the spare time. After reading the history of art for six times, I gradually got some feelings. I think this feeling is the sensitivity to art. In general, however, I am greatly influenced by you mainly because I like the circumstances built by you with visual languages and I think that it has some kind of potential relation with my profession--film.

　　Mr. Liu: The art is common. You learn from me, so it is not easy that our styles vary greatly.

　　The art is not to show off.

　　Oriental Art: Do both of you talk about the initial mind of artistic creative behaviors?

　　Mr. Liu: I simply like the painting from childhood, having no other purpose. Then, I am insisting on my liking, becoming an artist now. I think it is a deserved status.

　　Mr. Lv: The selection of photography specialty is attributed to my interest in film. I worked in CCTV for a while after graduation. I left CCTV due to the sense of loss after my artistic ideas took shape and because I was tired of the routine life of CCTV in my heart. Then I found the private plot of painting in my heart and dug it by accident. I could not imagine that I was unable to cast off it due to my intense feeling to it. It becomes the product of externalization of sensibility of my spiritual consciousness, or a kind of bailment. I am stuck on it by degrees. It is lucky that the photography and painting are all plane and two-dimensional. In the transition process, I experience the changes of languages and the pattern of behaviors of “description” increases, including scribble and stroke. Though the sensibility prevail at first, the rationality prevail over the sensibility finally, substituting for the weakening sensibility.

　　Mr. Liu: I think that the sensibility should coexist with the rationality and both of them should be complemented by each other. If there are lots of rational contents in the painting, there will be few sensible passions. At present, many Chinese paintings are just the simple graphic formula and the creation passion is cleared up virtually. This kind of creation behavior makes no sense. Moreover, I think the sensible contents occupy a large proportion in your paintings.

　　Mr. Lv: The rationality I talked about is the attention to the current situations of Chinese modern society and the attitude towards the rational analysis adopted in the painting representation. I am fond of thinking about the formation and spread of these problems. I am not luckier than you. I have wandered outside the field of painting for a number of years, but I have been seeking for something until I found it. I enjoy the process of painting, getting the method of unbosoming myself spiritually.

　　Oriental Art: In the face of all sorts of practical problems in Chinese modern artistic circle, for instance, the exchanges in the progressive art circle for the sake of appearance, are there any changes in the creation beyond anticipation?

　　Mr. Liu: In my opinion, the attitude should be definite. Moreover, I should learn to reject some things and hold myself, knowing what I really want to get. The painting is absolutely not a problem of quantity. The energy of human being is limited, so I will be satisfactory even if there are only ten finished works in a year.

　　Mr. Lv: People’s desire for money varies greatly. If there is an option between finishing good works and earning money, the true artist will be destined to choose the former and are free from the bondage of money. It is terrible that more and more people throw themselves into the business opportunity of the latter for the sake of earning money and make lifelong efforts to create artistic wastes, or commercial wastes. It can be imagined that how they face their own hearts. However, your paintings are novel every time when I see them and there is no fixed style to follow.

　　Mr. Liu: I take new things into consideration every year, making attempts and tests without cease and doing my best to develop my potential. Since the life is changing, the works should be different in different periods. My ever-changing spiritual conditions, which are expressed in traditional and fashionable engravings, paper and canvas, lead to the “the style of absence of style”, which is my style.

　　Mr. Lv: There are three important elements in the easel painting, that is, individual language, sense of form and idea. The current situations of Chinese contemporary art are under deconstruction all the while. There is a lack of strength of construction, on the contrary, I like to think about, search after and make efforts to build the brand new elements of the individual language system.

　　Origin of Metaphysics

　　Oriental Art: The problems attracting attention determines the height and distance of thinking, so please talk about the relationship between these phenomena and creation.

　　Mr. Liu: In recent time, I have exerted myself to create some landscapes, which look “extremely bad” and give bad feelings to people at first sight. The traditional pure landscape, in fact, is the externalization of psychological scene and shows deserved perfect gesture for the scenery with hills and water. I almost make an issue of these landscapes on the basis of perfect landscapes. However, my landscapes are “anti-landscapes”, which are somewhat strange and miscellaneous. If you see them nearby, you will find no shape and only the disorderly lines at close quarters. I think that the landscape can cover lots of things, not merely the pure environment. Except the social landscapes and problematic landscapes, the human being, substances, events, survival and phenomena may be a kind of internal pattern. (Liu Wei Landscape 2005)

　　Mr. Lv: In fact, the ironical painting languages help you walk out the traditional set pattern, and thus the works produce new practical meanings. As a matter of fact, the damage of high-tech to human beings and nature has the necessity of advancement of social form, while the interpersonal space of idea becomes more and more definite. The procedure should be reformed both in the cultural words and in the artistic ecology. The human being should conduct self-examination, instead of inhabiting the society suffering from scientific and technological damages. Actually, there is no genuine postmodernism in China. The so-called postmodernism is the republication of Western’s postmodernism, not the Chinese concept. When the art enters the age of post-enlightenment, the pluralization, globalization and science and technology produce innumerable natural damages to the human being. Therefore, what should an artist really think about? I think that the artist should think about how to build up the genuinely contemporary Chinese art under the impact of new era.

　　Mr. Liu: Yeah. I am willing to worship artists in modern times, including Zhang Daqian, Qi Beishi and Xu Beihong, who had distinctive features respectively. They either selected the Chinese folk essence or absorbed the Western representation languages. Moreover, they were able to use them for reference naturally, having the acute creativity and clear painting ideas. To be an artist, one should have personal and distinctive features and then develop it decisively.

　　Mr. Lv: In the early stage, I researched Ba Da and Jin Nong, including Zhang Daqian and Qi Baishi, which are full of Chinese traditional cultures. If one is not flexible in the study, he will be unable to use his knowledge by himself. The easel painting has reached to a certain height, so it is hard to create new things.

　　Mr. Liu: Among the Western artists, I revere Picasso very much due to his vigorous energy and wonderful creativity. I also revere Bacon because his paintings make you calm but not blundering and provide you with the ultra pleasant sensation of life by the rational creation.

　　Mr. Lv: In my works, I put pigs and flowers together, so I feel there is a kind of indefinite contradiction. I pay attention to the handling of light in the painting, so the painting will unconsciously give visitors a film vision, which is my own profession. What is the human being searching for may be some kind of potential qualities possessed by him. The more dedicatedly you work, the solider your paintings are. Painting is just like conducting oneself, so you can do anything but be fickle.

　　Enjoyment and Quality

　　Oriental Art: To find, face and know about yourself in the enjoyment. To enjoy the paintings, in fact, is a high-grade painting behavior, hiding the skills under the easy face. The quality and enjoyment should not be the two sides of contradiction.

　　Mr. Lv: The enjoyment contains some intrinsic things including obligation. The rational enjoyment is the required psychology of creation.

　　Mr. Liu: To create works genuinely after the cheerful enjoyment, in fact, is to create works with a high standard. The “judgment” is important and costly in the art and covers many things, including the judgment of favor, tea, painting and human being. The enjoyment, as a matter of fact, needs a standard and wisdom.

　　Oriental Art: I notice that the characters in Lv Shun’s works in the early stage are all abstract faces that cannot be identified. I think you put stress on holding the self of human being, instead of the country where he comes from. The illegibility of identity of characters can help you find the common attribute of objects, including the subsequent little pigs, which have the humanization languages.

　　Mr. Lv: I have believed in “the paintings can show one’s qualities” all along, so you must learn to behave well in order to paint good paintings. I think the true artist should keep an eye on the human being like an “angel” and many objects have been humanized in their eyes. I never paint the pig as the pig in my system of painting language. The pig actually is a creature having noble and sad emotion in my painting language.

　　Mr. Liu: It is the expression of humanization of pan-creature.

　　Mr. Lv: A set of rotten flowers having religious and sad emotions prevail in my transition period of painting, which are also the continuation of sex theme. In the great industrial society, I make efforts to portray the spiritual memory of an age. The current series paintings are the extension of plot of flowers.

　　Oriental Art: I find that your recent works tend to the dissimilation of mythology, which make me recall the scenes in the ancient Greek and Roman mythology. What is different is that you dissimilate the dryad to be pink little pigs having different kinds of postures. In fact, it is a reflection and banter, making people recall the “animism”. The noble sympathy that you endue other creatures with indicates the concept that all creatures are equal in your soul, which is the natural experience of life of “extensive love for all creatures”. The art not only needs the imaginary elements, but has logical elements. There is a saying that the conclusion elicited from the premise off the point by the perfect logic is not credible. Whether the art is feasible needs a premise. For your art, do you know what the premise of creation is?

　　Mr. Lv: For my part, the premise may be a formation of experience of life and about the thinking of artistic rationalism. Earlier, it is likely that I took more time to consider the original contradiction of animal instinct and the pleasant sensation of capturing sensible emotion of life. At that time, I, young and impetuous, had a strong desire for the expression of formal language, which existed in the control of unconscious instinct. At present, however, the desire focuses on conceptual metaphor of deep level of life, using the high-quality mirage form to transform the stuffy perdition of the original instinct. In other words, I find out the room for thinking having individual symbolization and an experience that the meaningful form can be extended and deepened. With regard to the art and life, it is necessary to think about the existing artistic problems with rational and wide-angle global consciousness and to take a rational attitude.

　　Mr. Liu: Since I am a sensible man, if I have interest in it, I will do it vigorously; if I don’t have interest in it, I will not do it. I will go to work in 10 minutes when I have feeling to do it. I will select to do other things in other hours, which have nothing to do with painting. I have numbers of unfinished works because my feelings have not made me satisfactory in the process of creation. At present, my thinking is different from that in the past. In the process of creation, I may pass several branch points of thinking. The final completion of works may be contrary to the original intention. Though the initial idea is continually negated by me in the process of creation, this process condenses the strength of thinking, belonging to the process of sublimation. For instance, if one has the feeling to a building, he will think about how to move it on the plane in order to show the intention properly.

　　Postscript: As for a person’s artistic behaviors, if he has an understanding on space of life and road of art, the side roads he takes by accident on the way will become the road to success he must pass now. The formation of a style will certainly go with some kind of initially impulsive components; however, what is rarer is the imperturbable and rational structural gesture after the impulse. This rational outbreak is often connected with a storm of “Ultra Pleasant Sensation”.