There seems to be a clear personal appearance emerging in ZHANG Jian's paintings. Like his date of birth, his paintings are a kind of ego characteristic between two generations, connecting between the preceding and the following, but yet without the group characteristics of the generation before or after. His paintings belong to a kind of the poetic presentational field, and a kind of personal prowling status in the turn of the times.

　　His paintings contain a kind of reserved and poetic view and there seems to be a real sight source behind the paintings, but the poetic view on the surface does not imitate that behind. It is a view infiltrated with a kind of slowly poetic feeling of flowing existing in the plane, but only surviving on this surface. All of his paintings are meant to preserve this poetic flavour as weak as mirage.

　　As to the capture and taste of the poetic flavour, it is such an upset but beautiful thing, seemingly a kind of lonely self-protection in this age, which happens in a view trip of the pictures. There is always a kind of blue and blurred feeling floating in ZHANG Jian's paintings, like a layer of mirage suffusing on the surface of the pictures. Like Hou Hai, the thin but blurred feeling scattered and spread on the water, with the picture always in an inexplicable state of uncertainty.

　　This is the personal prowling state. Its characteristics of early stage were mainly demonstrated in spaces like somewhere beside the bank of Hou Hai, the pond of the park and flower shed outside the house. During this period of time, he began showing a kind of personal tendence. The political and social symbolic space of the preceding generation did not appear on him, but he chose places suitable for private touring like gardens and river banks, which were still regarded as places for personal prowling though most of them were public space.

　　In this field, ZHANG Jian also described youth themes, daily life of petty bourgeoisies, forecasting the coming of a new age. However, his feelings towards the youths did not show any characteristics of "cruelty of the youth" after the 70s. He stressed upon a kind of beautiful and blue poetic flavor, as well as the "impressionism-style" formal language of the aestheticism. In the two aspects of "cruelty of the youth" and photography and picture allegory, ZHANG Jian went far and far away from the painting way prevailing after the 70s. He attached higher importance to the inquiring and visiting nature of the personal prowling than the preceding generation did, as well as the graphic language and the poetic flavor of the aestheticism than the generation of the 70s, which were actually two basic tendencesof paintings after ZHANG Jian. So he not only broke away from his preceding generation, but also failed to catch up with the trend after the 70s, he began his own personal trip of poetic flavor.

　　ZHANG Jian's subject matters have no significant change in the last decade of years, Hou Hai, Chang An Street, Tian An Men Square, a corner of a garden, etc. The images seem to be a kind of space diaries of personal prowling and the catpure of abiogenetic and inexplicable emotions. He mainly holds a kind of weak and blurred ego emotion in his pictures, which becomes more and more cloudy and reserved with the time passing by. ZHANG Jian expresses an ideal and poetic field all the way round. From the right beginning, he tried to turn an ideal partial impression of the reality into a kind of graphic language. Then later he gave up the representing relationship between graphic language and reality impressions, directly created the poetic image field based on the photographic presentations of the sights. In the third stage, he even gave up the photographic characteristics of sight presentation, created a kind of decorative formal language.

　　The three stages form an ego axes, in which the emerging sights of the times in the mid 90s and ego characteristics, like building blocks in the cities and the pictures of consumption culture, as well as the change of the art after the 70s from cruelty to nihility, never appeared. The axes neither breaks away from nor deepens into the times, but keeps a kind of self dissociating state.

　　The poetic field and graphic formal language are the cores of the ego axes of ZHANG Jian. The endosarc of the field and the graphic nature of the formal language are integrative. ZHANG Jian's painting journey is actually an inward exploration of the poetic level and a graphic form as a carrier for the poetic core. The formal language and the change of the poetic levels are core axes of different painting periods of ZHANG Jian, which includes three periods of times: language of impressionism and poetic ideal field, poetic flavor of the views and space prowling of sentimentalism, decorative formal pictures and aethetic ego field.

　　We can not see the scenes and changes of the mainstream society in ZHANG Jian's pictures, though inevitably affected in emotions by the times in. His paintings are mainly presenting all individual efforts resisting against the submergence by the times, but he shows such resistance not through criticism and irony, but engaged into building an ideal field in ego based on the noumenon practice of the painting language.

　　In early practices of impressionism language, ZHANG Jian's formal language was rather subjectified. In his early paintings, he just color-separated the objective matters in form and subjectified in color block and color tone. The latter presented a kind of poetic emotion while with not actual picture poetic flavor.

　　ZHANG Jian made great adjustment on his painting objectives in his latter presentation of "Hou Hai", "Tian An Men Square", etc. In this stage, he withdrew his painting graphics from subjective views, but not returned back to the objective presentation with meanings of photographic pictures, just constantly poeticized the presentation and represented the poetic flavor containing inside the object matters and sights, or tried to pursue the "self-representing" of poetic characteristics of the matter and space sights.

　　Through such poeticized treatment of abstract characteristics, the painting was turned into a presentation of more abstract image poetry, including uncertainty, blur and dissociation. Take Hou Hai for example, the image tends to contain a kind of grey tone, specifically spread in different poetic state, the grey was divided into different color tones, including gray-violet, gray-black and gray blue. It is different from the luminosity use of "impressionism" tone in early time, but just seeks the luminosity tone corresponding to the emtional states, The series of Hou Hai tones are actually not real luminosity tones, but a kind of formal tones symbolizing the poetic flavor, including blurred, floating, spreading and absentminded.

　　For representation of the poetic pictures, ZHANG Jian was influenced by the forms of the famous German painter Richter. For him, the absorption of characteristics from Richter-style photographic pictures with blurred focusing was more a graphic upgrading, that is, from just representing the personal prowling and emotional expressing in the social space to communicating a kind of poetic ego thought and uncertain abstract emotions, as well as describing the poetic sights of the picture space itself, for example, the blurring scenery in the river bank and the horizon, waves on the surface floating slowly, swimmers with body partly hidden and partly visible, yachts slowly driven on the water surface with weak smoke, as well as a floating boat seemingly still under the blurred sky of Hou Hai.

　　ZHANG Jian actually regarded the poeticized space presentation as a free world for individuals to resist against the times in Hou Hai. The world was located in a plane between the subject and the object, in which the presentation of the reality sights was complanate and the presentation was poeticized. In the first stage, ZHANG Jian's language was the formalization or impressionistic of romantic sights, like "Sunny Days" and "Paradise"; in the second stage, it was the poeticization of picture, like "Hou Hai"; Then later, it represented as a kind of poetic formal paintings like "Peter's Dream of Hou Hai" and "Chenchen's Dream of Hou Hai".

　　The last series is a more formalized language practice, with pictures adobing the extremely strong formal characteristics of decorative paintings. This time, ZHANG Jian no longer use the ready image style in his pictures, like the natural tone of the "impressionism" and object characteristics of photographic paintings. In "Peter's Dream of Hou Hai", he restored all object matters and sights into image lines disappeared in the line between the formal tones and sense of reality. The pictures of this series contain almost no sense of reality and formal characteristics of the object matters, but enter into a formal presentation of real meaning, that is, a poetic picture form.

　　It may be the graphic formal practice that leads him to a formal extremity in the aesthetic sense, seemingly of rather dereism and surrealism. Later, ZHANG Jian still paints on "Hou Hai" at times, which seemingly becomes his prowling place with stronger and stronger emotions. That place is always lonely and dissociated in his paintings, like dense fog always above the surface. Even though it is uncertain and upset, it contains a kind of secret sense of mystery. This may be a space allegory acknowledged by ZHANG Jian unconsciously, that is in this age, the poetic flavor of the ego is a kind of view floating on the surface.

WANG Jing, Nov. 30th 2006

作者：ZHU Qi