There are no concrete images, and even no definite abstract forms in Shang Pingjun's paintings. Formalist principles are not traceable in his paintings and all forms and colors have appeared in a random way, as if they are idealist traces.
　　He began to produce paintings in the middle 1980s. At that time he was rather unwilling to depict figures very realistically, and laid special emphasis on the depiction of forms of various turbid tones and lines within the framework of realist painting. The same can be said of his landscape paintings of the middle 1990s, in which color masses or random strokes are prominent though within the landscape structure. In his paintings afterwards, all image structures of figures or landscapes have disappeared and his art has entered the stage of abstraction.
　　From realism, expressionism to abstract art, Shang Pingjun has finished his training of form in painting. His paintings, though appearing to belong to abstract art, are not, in fact, entirely abstract paintings in the Western sense. For they show no definite norms of painting or abstractionist ideas; though some elements of psychological mood can be discerned in them, his paintings do not completely deserve to be called a kind of abstract expressionism.
　　Shang Pingjun once produced conceptual abstract art, such as 1998, an abstract image in which dot-like elements are distributed in uneven density in a regular and gradual way. However, after producing several conceptual abstract works, he soon abandoned the kind of painting in which geometrical character and formal principle of the organization of the painting elements are emphasized. Later his paintings became more and more randomly made, even to the extent that the strokes were scattered here and there aimlessly.
　　Most of his paintings consist of sporadic strokes, color spots and faintly discernible lines on an empty ground color; evenly applied pure colors are seldom used in his paintings and what is seen in them are almost all randomly distributed dark or light tones of a same color. In some of his works, a layer of color is superimposed on other layers and dots of colors of the lower layer are revealed through the crevices of the upper layer. Of course, some of his paintings do not entirely consist of several color dots on the empty canvas; instead, they contain scattered or interlaced lines as well as hordes of color dots
　　It is an appeal of modern painting to break away from the framework of concrete images so that the painting may show more freedom in form, and colors, lines, strokes, dots and masses may function as basic elements of the painting. It seems that Shang Pingjun has accepted the abstract form of painting but at the same time he tries to eliminate the conceptual nature and formal principles of modern painting so that painting may enter an unconstrained mental realm. Theoretically, when modern painting advances to the stage of abstract form, painting will become a form of consciousness. The effect the painter may have on the visual aspects of painting lies in the principles of the organization and production of visual forms.
　　If the painting consciousness about the organization of visual forms and its principles is eliminated, the painter will enter a "preconscious" state in which the imagination about the form of painting is absent. As a result, what is lost in the creation of painting is not only the formal control of painting but also the consciousness of form. It is exactly this subjective consciousness of formal organization that Shang Pingjun wants to eliminate, and this bring about for him a further problem of modern painting, that is, if painting further eliminates its own formalism, consciousness itself will become the last thing left to be eliminated.
　　However, Shang Pingjun indeed takes this step. As a result of this elimination, his painting, under the cloak of abstract forms, seems to have returned to the field of consciousness in the Buddhist sense. This is the key to the understanding of Shang Pingjun's painting and it can also explain what modern painting can do in the context of new media, physicalism and theatricality of contemporary art. It seems that Shang Pingjun is still exploring perseveringly the problem of the way out of modern painting. If modern painting still confines its own task to painterliness touching means of language beyond  painting, what are the new internal factors dominating painterliness?

　　In a sense, eliminating the subjective consciousness of painting or producing pictures without definite consciousness of the organization of the forms in  a painting is something practiced in automatic writing or painting in the surrealist period in the 1930s in Paris, that is, according to Freudian theory of psychoanalysis, allowing unconsciousness to dominate one's creation. But this still belongs to a kind of conceptual behavior with unconsciousness as the dominating principle.
　　Shang Pingjun is obviously in favor of a kind of preconsciousness in which consciousness is abandoned, i.e., the state before consciousness appears. However, this state of inner mind is not a primitive state. It contains various behaviors of self-contemplation about the state of mind, and tries to make this self-contemplation feel free, and at the same time this self-contemplation is free itself. For example, To Wang Yangming, Emptiness and Form Inseparable and The Antrabhara.
　　In To Wang Yangming, blue strokes intertwine layer after layer aimlessly and then are covered with white strokes of various shades. The strokes are scattered irregularly. In Emptiness and Form Inseparable, the painting almost looks like a blank space. The white color itself here is of various shades. On the white color are two or three blue dots with a dark blue core and a light blue periphery. No regularity can be found in their distribution, and they are added at the instant when an idea occurs to the painter. In The Antrabhara, the ground color is black of various shades, and the black color is permeated with red, blue and white dots. There seems to be no regularity in the matching of colors. The black color is heterogeneous but not suffocating.
　　Obviously, in the process of advancing to freedom, some paintings have not achieved freedom entirely. For this freedom is not the realm of emptiness in the sense of the Zen; it is closer to a state of Tantrism, for example, Realm of Light and Shining Brilliantly. It is a wonderful state of mind rarely found in abstract art. It is like the delightfulness one experiences when he suddenly finds a realm of light in a dark and desolate environment. It is not a kind of ecstasy, but a pure feeling of brightness bursting out in an instant. Shining Brilliantly is a work in gray and white tone. The white color may give a feeling of light that makes the eye feel bright in an instant. The brightness in the gray color is very pure, and it is the brightness itself. It is an empty brightness, but the state of mind will not fluctuate.
　　The feeling of light of the tone in Realm of Light is similar to that in Shining Brilliantly. On the red ground color, the yellow dots distributed like stars give a feeling of light diffusing in all directions. However, they do not manifest a splendid ecstasy; they are a kind of extremely tranquil bright light. This pure brightness or tranquil bright light, rarely seen in modernist painting, is a kind of tone and feeling of light that belongs to a religious realm. This feeling of light comes not from the hint of images, but from purely abstract tones. Abstract art seldom achieves the spirituality of tones, but Shang Pingjun opens up a possibility for it.
　　This possibility does not stem from the principles of the organization or disintegration of tones; on the contrary, it is due to the disappearance of the principles of the organization of forms. The only norm, if any, is the "idealist" one, that is, all the traces in the painting are dependent on the painter's state of mind. Most of the titles of Shang Pingjun's works have something to do with the state of mind, for example, Empty Hills, Awakening, Ethereality, Sleepwalking, Asvabhāva, Self-Clearness and Self-Emergence and Amid the Clouds and Mist.
　　To a great extent, the essential thing of Chinese painting or other artistic traditions of China is to convey or describe some inner realm image, and after the Jin and Tang Dynasties, in particular, due to the influence of Buddhism, poetry, calligraphy and painting turned to the expression of a kind of poetic artistic conception, that is, the "poetic realm". The concept of "realm" stems from Buddhism, but there are different levels of "realm" in Buddhism, for example, the realm belonging to the emotional level, to the mental level, to the consciousness level, or to the ultimate realm, that is, "emptiness", "freedom", "sabhāva", etc.

　　Shang Pingjun obviously tries to introduce abstract forms and the ultimate presentation of "realm" in Buddhism into the practice of painting. However, the core of organizing abstract elements and "realm" into painting is the "idealist realm image", that is, to solve the problem of the way out of Chinese painting in modern era beginning with the presentation of the "realm image" of the mind and its abstract form. That is, in Shang Pingjun's words, the "merging of realm and mentality". The problem of the modernity of Western modern art was solved by two steps: the first step was from Cézanne to the formalist abstraction of cubism; the second was to infuse the spirituality of the Zen and Christianity into the principles of abstract forms, for example, what was done by the abstract expressionists Mark Tobey, Ad Reinhardt, Mark Rothko and others.
　　It is impossible to achieve the modernity of Chinese painting by two steps, the formalist abstraction and abstract spiritual principle, because there is not the philosophical basis of formalist abstraction in Chinese tradition, and the Confucian school of idealist philosophy of the Ming dynasty correspondent to Kant's modern philosophy emphasizes the "study of mind" and its ideological system does not contain any abstract conceptual forms. The difference between Chinese and Western philosophy lies in the distinction between the "realm image" and the "mirror image". After Plato, the mirror and the mirror image became a philosophical metaphor. Philosophy is regarded as a mirror of nature, and thinking as the mirror image of reality. Western painting is also regarded as a mirror, reflecting reality realistically. As a result, the starting point of Western modernism is to prevent painting from being a mirror any longer through formalist abstraction. This is the first problem to be solved to achieve the modernity of painting.

　　Obviously, the step of formalism is unnecessary to Chinese painting, because this tradition itself is not a "mirror image" system. Chinese painting has always been in the "realm image" tradition, that is, to present a poetic realm with the aid of distorted or picture book style images. The central aim is to elevate the state of mind to a poetic realm and to depict this poetic realm in a "picture book" style or to transform it to painterliness. The key to the modern transformation of Chinese traditional core system of painting is to solve the problem of the monotony of the material of ink and wash and the modernity of the philosophical religious connotation of the "realm".
　　The system of literati painting does not constitute the whole tradition of Chinese painting. Literati painting is mostly confined to the expression of the aesthetic "poetic realm", but in fact the expression of a higher level of ultimate situation began to exist long ago in Buddhist paintings and statues. In a sense, Shang Pingjun takes this painting system as a starting point of modern transformation, that is, the modern way out of Chinese painting does not lie in the formalist orientation of ink and wash, but lies in the elevation of the connotation of the "realm" to the ultimate presentation of ideas and freedom. Related to this, the language will also incline to a more abstract form.
　　It is undeniable that the use of abstract forms is due to the influence of the West, but Shang Pingjun has obviously eliminated the principle of the organization of abstract forms, a modern formalist subjective consciousness. Western formalism emphasizes that the abstract language is a form of consciousness, or a pure form of concept, but Shang Pingjun prefers to including painting in the "preconscious" exploration of the relation between the realm and the mentality, and making the realm and the mentality an absolute area without any distinction. Although this exploration has not achieved sufficient freedom, he has opened up a new possible direction.

Completed in Wangjing on the morning of September 26, 2013

作者：Zhu,Qi