Nowadays, exhibitions have almost become sites for social interactions. For many artists, what they value is only the effect of "showing", and those "uncommon" works and speculation are really tiresome. The art circle is just benumbed, and few things can touch your heart. Maybe this is the result of focusing on market and profit only. I am not a slick person, and I am not good at sociality. To me, for art to be touching, it is similar to the way of treating a friend, which means that you have to be sincere, intelligent, and dedicated; you have to discover the true self, which is a self in nature. Such feeling existing in human nature is especially true, sensitive, and appealing. It is not to be disturbed. To keep such sensitivity requires long-time training. It grows as you grow up, and it is influenced as you are influenced, so it will be stylized and personalized. I have always loved enhancing my world outlook stubbornly. It was part of my earliest memory that I loved proving my understanding and views from every source, making it grow instead of completely changing it easily. It is something like destroying, rebuilding, searching and persisting on a seemingly bad work, and I can gain more from it than simply putting on a new canvas without thinking. The complicated state of living in China today is a challenge to both our understanding and expression. This is not a problem that can be solved by imitation or utilization of other's experience. There is no ready answer. We need to experience, practice, and think. Or there is one simple condition—position and attitude. With position, everything may become clear—keeping the innate sensitivity and creating touching works.

　　With the precondition of technicalization and globalization, what I try to emphasize is the influence on people under such circumstances, the power of secret moods, human nature and desire, including the requirement for the feeling of painting in the traditional sense. This is my concern and love for the academic experience pattern (which makes me neither willing to accept cartoon nor refuse it). But creation does not mean sticking to the old so-called traditional concepts. Rather, it is a summarization of the common characteristics of people in the same age and should include the features of the time. China may be the fastest developing country in the past two decades, not only in economy, but in culture and ideas as well. Moreover, with the differences in culture and custom between the north and the south, the Chinese women show multiple differences. Luckily, I am a girl that was born in the southwest China at the beginning of China's reform and opening-up. I have been going through the strongest changes of the time. The city in which I was born and grew up develops and changes every year with an amazing speed.

　　The fast development in China has also brought the influence that is against the traditional morality and culture. It is called vanity. In this foamy time, mass election, false vote, vulgar politics, digital economy, beauty effect, and beautiful commercials make people forget the existence of crisis and pain. People are used to judge things or other people by their package, girls wasting their youth hope to change love for jewelries. In the newspaper, there might be real estate or stock news in the front, and plastic surgery for bosom enlargement on its back. Inconsistent things appear to be nice and colorful under the cover of bubbles.

　　These seemingly beautiful combinations really come from the things that are most passionately pursued in China today, such as extreme slimness, plumpy body and big bosom, luxuries, money and sex, etc. But these things are out of line in the fast developing China. Quick economic growth will cause the gap between the rich and poor. Many luxuries and some people's luxurious life are unreachable for the general public. The omnipresent commercials, commodities and the life of rich people are in front of the young people all the time, being a great temptation for them. However, it is not easy for every young Chinese to obtain these things. They may work very hard day and night, but some girls just take the shortcut by exchanging beauty, youth, and even love for money and other material things. Therefore, in such a state, people's mind is distorted. They are unhappy. It seems that what they pursue is nice and fine, but actually not many people feel happy with them. According to the ancient Chinese wisdom, fickleness and luxury are to be opposed, because they would make people greedy, and being over-obsessed with material things will finally make one feel empty and lonely.

　　At the same time, in traditional Chinese culture, it is believed that "people are born pure in nature", which means that men are born equal and sacred; they are not greedy, and they certainly will not betray love. However, Internet and commerce have already entered the life of small children, and they are everywhere. As against the traditional culture, small children are faced with all kinds of influences as soon as they are born. In China today, it is very common—they have to get used to this society. All pictures make extreme exaggeration of all aesthetic elements to create a new image, trying to present desire, temptation and the complicated mind-set through their expressions, body language, and other suggestive symbols. At the same time however they are babies with only one tooth. These are inconsistent combinations, but people habitually think they are beautiful.

　　The images in my works are created on the basis of reality and through exaggeration and deformation. They have no direct links to the usual cartoon images. In history, the creation of the men of letters or artists has always been meant to typify and present in an artistic way the aspects of life, so the artistic way of exaggerated expression is very important and it has been used all through history. If you open any classical literature, poems or prose, you can clearly see the artistic way of expression through exaggeration. The functions of such means are: first, you will have the artistic image, obtain aesthetic symbols, and achieve the formal beauty of art; second, the image thus created is higher than life; it is more beautiful than the real and natural object; third, the aesthetic characteristics and artistic appeals are strengthened. These images are closer to fashionable and popular culture, and its original intention is to summarize the popular aesthetics. It is something with the features of the time, just like cartoons. And this is a model of the information age as well. "Despite representing high intelligence quotient in science fiction, it often symbolizes mental deficiency in reality. Intelligence and stupidity are contradictions." With the most fashionable face-painting technique，the beauty of youth, which is full of contradictions and alienation and even a bit of morbidity, is presented. Today's young people do not just have happy spending and cruel youth. They are often confused in face of personal psychological conflicts. The images are unreal. The plastic-toy-like heads are not only similar in type, but also easy to duplicate. The human subjectivity is left out, but the mood is very real. The figure images in the works are basically from the real people and real circumstance around us.

　　The girls in the works are all in an abandoned manner. They represent my presentation as well as reflection of this gradually materialized society. Such a manner is very common. I have quietly observed such girls in many circumstances. They are very beautiful, very young, but, to some extent, are narcissistic and self-pitying. I used to meet many girls like these when I was a part-time model in a model company. It seems that they represent many typical social problems today. They are narcissistic and self-aware. Indeed, this is a feeling caused by this age. The boundary between reality and illusion is blurred by the Internet as well as by commercialization and globalization. There it is hard for people to find themselves, although they pursue personality and individuality so much. The alienation by material things is not something that is only faced by movie-stars like Marilyn Monroe. Rather, it is a question that everyone who was born in this age will face and consider.

　　In order to satirize those young girls' endless effort to lose weight, I make the body of the girl in my pictures, NANA, as slim as that of a model. They wish they would have plumpy bosoms, so I draw extremely plumpy bosoms, which they regard as their dream shape. I put the most popular facial features together, with tempting and misted expressions and intoxicated looks. "The charming looks always reveal a unique mood of youth—the youth is perfect while defective, lovely while morbid, happy while sadly beautiful." The fancy colors and superrealistic style is with definite personality when used to present the theme of youth. It is an expression of youth that is full of contradictions, alienations and introspectiveness. Maybe she is "impudent", "tempting", or "lazy", but you can also find that sometimes there is some "innocence" and desperation in her looks, and we cannot give any comments.

　　There may be a time that we will discover that the so-called "pursuit for freedom" will only bring us more restrictions. It may have nothing to do with our ideals. However, the emptiness in their looks attracts me, just like the blank in Chinese painting, giving people room for imagination. Perhaps in this way we can return to our pure animal nature.

　　I often put some metaphoric symbols in my works, carrying some traits of ardor, including the frequently appearing fish, water, and the presentation of female bodies. But these are not the essence that I want to reveal. They are desires, pressures, weak nerves…I want to create a kind of atmosphere for the audience, but it cannot be too direct, because for many works infectivity is found in a depressed and painful atmosphere. I hope that I can use some seemingly beautiful things to reflect a few sensitive questions, enabling the audience to directly feel something, from the atmosphere to objects, from skin to senses, and from expressions to mood. And I believe that since everyone has different experiences, different angles of understanding things, and different positions, people will have different feelings looking at my paintings. This is very interesting, like doing psychological tests. I love the possibilities brought by the space.

　　In my works, the jewelries, perfume, fashionable girls…all these symbols from the consumption society create a self-enjoying and self-intoxicating atmosphere, symbolizing the pursuit for the beautiful, wealthy, and easy life. However, not every girl's dream can come true. Though it is unrealistic, I cannot bear to blame them. The fish is both expression of life and sign of weakness; presentation of beauty but giving a wet, sticky sensation. These symbols carry the pity for females and irony of vanity.

　　The water in the work "Come Back and You will be Saved" is likely to drown the girls soon. They are panicked, but they still have no idea. This is a dreamlike, illusory situation, shown by the relationship between the figures and their environment. The girls are drowning in the water, and around them is an incredible pond and terrible caterpillars…it is just like our consumption society, where people are hard to realize the crisis resulted from over-materialization and mammonism. Water is a metaphor for pressure and terror. When one is submerged into the water, he will feel great pressure in the chest and breaths will become very short. Though the pressure of life is abstract, it can still give us similar feelings as the water pressure. It is only that this abstract water makes people more confused, and temptations, like a water monster, makes them drown deeper and deeper.

　　Questions such as realness or expression are hidden in these nearly virtual images. Creation is the combination of ideal and reality, sense and exclamation, thus highlighting the effect of "fabricated realness".

　　In the work "Illusion in the Mirror", the cold mirror reflects an absorbed bloodshot eye with illusions. It seems that it is exploring complicated and subtle questions, for its looks and expressions are filled with doubts. Surprised or tired, chuckling to herself or with animal-like curiosity, the appearance of such complicated moods in a mirror is the tease and reflection of the pressure of female appearance. Then we return to the origin of artistic works—the real life, from which we obtain fresh intuition and inspiration.

　　You quietly watch the wide open eyes filled with complicated moods. It is an incomplete face, but it has the expressions that seems to be familiar to anyone. You do not hate or appraise, accuse or lament. It is not boring pastime. It is complete helplessness and utmost indulgence. Anyone who has read about feminism knows that "women are not born women, but they are created women."(Simon de Beauvior) And the major force for the creation of women is men's view. Beauty contest is a typical example of creating model women according to men's view. Girls make every effort to go through all kinds of training, so as to put themselves into the frames designed by men and start a life and death competition before a lady with "both beauty and intelligence" is produced.

　　The skin of magic texture and strengthened facial expressions are the most outstanding characteristics that I hope my works would have. I am obsessed with such skin. I like its translucent and slippery texture, just as I like the glittering and translucent jelly. It is a feeling of "a fest to the eye" that I want. Such texture, just like jelly and silicagel, is the specialty of this time. To me, it is one of the representatives of this time. Because of its extreme refinement and subtle colors, together with the translucent texture, the figure in the picture looks like a translucent floating fetus under the microscope. It is a strangely "unreal" realness, looking into the nature of illusions that has been covered by representation.

　　In the work "Drunk", the girl has two deciduous teeth, her lazy looks showing some purity and innocence. Her big bright head and sexy mature body are illusions that can only be seen when you are drunk. The glass-like body and face float on white liquid, drunk, and it seems that the bubble-like breasts with clearly seen veins will be dissolved in the liquid. In recent years, there is an interesting phenomenon, that is, the fashion is more feminine where the economy is more developed. Colorful eyelids and red lips no longer exclusively belong to women. Many boys present feminine elements more boldly on themselves, a scene brought by the fashion industry. The Chinese women are undergoing a fast and profound change, especially when they appear in media, the feminine social role, compared with what it was by the end of last century, presents big contrast. Women are commercialized and economized. Since the globalization advanced by capital and the political nationalism co-exist, such co-existence is partly reflected in the gender function and role that the society conveys to the Chinese women. In this new free market and consumption economy, the female image has become a carrier that pushes the feminine economy. Data on feminine beauty, created by the media, fashion industry, plastic surgery and weight-losing industry is forming a standard pattern for female beauty in our mind. Ideal and inflexible data has almost "unify" the women in the world. In the series works of "Age of Vanity", there are plenty of plumpy bodies with exaggerated characteristics as against stagnant baby-like innocent faces, as well as ardor and desires. Such is the common characteristic of my works. These elements are not only used to satisfy men's view and the viewing objects, but also result of commercial permeation and control. The ideal worship for face and shape, though familiar to us, is nothing natural. Maybe it is not beauty at all in the sense of evolution, and even a bit morbid. So I would like to present extreme materialism in my works, make them "look real". Maybe they can be described as "distorted", or maybe it complies with the general aesthetic standard. When such idealization is magnified tens of thousands of times, they will be closer to the realness that they are looking forward to.

Yang Na

At the Moon River, 2010

作者：杨纳