In the middle of the 1990s, Xu Chenyang started his independent painting creation. Similar to many artists, he started with the background of academic training. His early works incorporated surreal elements into the realistic style, and the language seemed relatively obscure, while the aesthetic temperament was low-spirited and melancholy. Obviously, he was influenced by both western modernist painting and modernist literature. In the late 1990s, Xu Chenyang had tried in different types of language style, such as figurative, realistic, imaginal, and performing style. Because each kind of language style has its own theoretical background and development genealogy, and has features that cannot be replaced, if appearing in the same picture, they are sure to insult each other, difficult to reconcile. At that stage, the artists' work styles were mostly eclectic, what made Xu Chenyang the most distressed was that he gave the language a distinct personality. In the creative ideas, Xu Chenyang is neither interested in the modernism tradition nor willing to pursue the tide of contemporary painting step by step. He hopes to find a middle strip between the academism and the present age, so as to make the works maintain certain narrative. In other words, one work needs a theme, but can't be limited by theme; works have their own linguistic expression, but words and rhetoric are just a part of the whole meaning of one work.

　　Artists always feel confused by the anxiety of languages. Xu Chenyang tries to get rid of the established creation experiences, and he is very eager to change and needs the stimulation of new thoughts. Where is the development road of language? In 1994, Xu Chenyang went to Japan to study for an oil painting master degree in the University of Tsukuba. This was a turning point, which also brought opportunity for the transition of his style afterwards. Once he talked about the feeling of that time, "at the beginning of 1990s, going abroad for education or tour was not convenient, various foreign schools and work of art could only be learned by limited albums of paintings and magazines. After arriving in Japan, I was able to see lots of original work and got access to various schools of art as well as many novel artistic expressions and methods of art. That shocked me greatly, and made me doubt of my previous forms of expression." Facing numerous new painting languages and styles, especially in the face of a brand new frame of reference, Xu Chenyang, on the one hand, corrected his previous train of thought for composition on his own initiative, diluted the theme, reduced the factor of surreal and gradually abandoned the three-dimensional space towards the two-dimensional works. On the other hand, he needed to find a language which could satisfy his expression of inner heart and make him create new meanings under the guidance of new creation methodology. During study of over ten years in Japan, artists carried out practices of various languages which were neither restricted by the drawing types nor nagged by the media. In addition to oil painting, he painted Tampere, Francois Mural, rock painting successively, and he also tried in the field of copperplate, watermark tinted board, wash painting boldly. He tried "trial and error" continually, and broke the original creating experience continually. Basing on the experimenting of languages, Xu Chenyang gradually found that different languages differs in literature smell, and literature characters, mutually unconsciously characterized people's visual and aesthetic experiences, for example, eastern and western, tradition and modern, concretization and abstraction, vision and touch, process and accidental. These experiences started to make artists shift their attention from the ontology of art to the research behind the language to explore the internal visual mechanism and cultural logic that have generated the language as well as the differences that have been formed. And during his graduate studies, his research topic was Possibility of Modern Oriental Paintings. At the same time, because of being in foreign countries, the difference between cross-cultural view and the surrounding reality made artists keep reminding themselves, and they were more sensitive to the "Chinese experience" that flows in blood.

　　With the change of the language and creating concept, the themes of artists' works also had new development. Tunnel Series expressed the very simple pattern tendency in the previous realistic style, while the subsequent Monument Series also transited to the concretization. Taking The Rising Sun and Tide series as representative, the style of Xu Chenyang's works entered into a relatively stable period and the themes mostly emphasize on the combination of female and flowers. Critic Mr. Peng Feng has interpreted in this way, "Most of the themes of Xu Chenyang's paintings were girls and flowers, and this may relate to his life in Japan for many years. In Japanese aesthetics, the topmost aesthetic emotion isn't happiness, but sorrow and melancholy, which are originated from fleeting beauty. Because of the permeation of melancholy, the beauty of Xu Chenyang's paintings is very different from general beauty. Different with the general beauty of bright and gorgeous, the beauty of paintings made by Xu Chenyang appears to be subtler, reserved and heavier. The differences between beauty and pretty are that the former resorts to not only our sensory, but also our meditation of soul."

　　Compared with previous works, great changes also lay in the creation and aesthetic temperament changes. Firstly, it is the expression of the shape and form of the linear. Painting creation is concerned, as long as it can arouse people's aesthetic experience, whether the object is a character, or natural landscape, following its representation will hide an inner form. Forms not only create aesthetic empathy, but also have the function of the model. However, for some artists, the creation inspiration with the most direct emergence comes from modality impulsion. Therefore, exploring the forms inside the picture is to withdraw the superficial world and give different meanings of forms to the objects which the artist wants to paint. In Chinese tradition, this method is more or less same with "being similar in form and appearance" and "going deeply into the principles". Of course, in these new works, Xu Chenyang does not pursue the exact reproduction of figures and environment, but gives the picture an internal visual order in the constant deliberation and simplification of forms. Since renaissance, one important direction for western painting is to pursue the reproduction for the visual art of external presentation world, which is based on two - dimensional plane. However, emphasis on linear modelling is to give up the most basic features of western classical painting in essence, and begin to get close to the aesthetic paradigm of oriental painting consciously.

　　The second characteristic is its classical flavor and religious sense. Long before it became academic painting, the Western classical painting had already constructed a set of shape rules, such as the emphasis on symmetry, harmony, moderation, balance. Winkelmann, a famous German art historian, thought that the classical tradition originated from the ancient Greek art, especially sculpture, and that the so-called "the noble pureness, serene greatness" is the perfect generalization of the classical spirit. On the depiction of characters in the painting, artists have been influenced by the early stage Renaissance and Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood more or less. The atmosphere of the picture is serenity but gloomy, carrying grace and mystery. Although there are some characters showing in the pictures, but for an artist, his goal is not to depict one person with one personality, on the contrary, is to pursue generality, which is a human figure from universal meaning. The reason that artists follow the classical painting rule is because they hope to make the emotion sublimation and works in the religious sense in the form of expression and modelling. This kind of creation concept has been extended to the recent paintings.

　　Since 2008, Xu Chenyang's works have the new progress on the subject. The figure painting is one of the main directions. This batch of works is not based on visual representation, and they are also different from the college realism. Compared with the early figure paintings, melancholy and mystique in the images has been completely subsided. However, the painters are still subject to the appeal of classical painting, trying to capture eternity in momentary and fragmented existence of figures, and to give it spirituality. In Dancers, Attitude and other works, artists hope to explore the kind of inner strength from daily body languages, or postures of those with a sense of show or some kind of ritual sense. At the same time, artists polish their own words, and continuously do the "reduction". They hope to correctly and restrainedly express the characters' personal emotions in the pure and dexterous forms. If these works are observed carefully, you will find the characters in paintings immerse in their own world or in meditation. Artists devoted themselves in the expression of the states of mind of the characters which gives the pictures plentiful psychological space. The Landscape of still life series represents another direction. In figurative expression, the artist reintegrates the surreal factors. The pictures still pay attention to the form of split screen, and have both rigorous internal visual structure and a sense of order. The Running Horse series is the third direction. Pictures abide by some basic principles of classical paintings, seek balance and achieve harmony from visual tension constituted by movement and stillness. Nevertheless, the surreal meaning in the picture is still intense, while the internal narrativity is in a separate state. Artists have been more or less affected by the western surrealism behind this batch of works, especially in the aspects of the paradox formed between the viewing perspective and the internal space.

　　Linguistically speaking, these works originated from the early Tide series, but also had the new propulsion. For example, pay attention to the penetration and coverage of the color, emphasize on the works' production and awareness of methodology, pursuing of the expression of contingency and imagery, and absorption of the Japanese rock painting and mural style in the icon. That is to say, in the process of creation, color is not covered but overlap, and it is the result of mutual fusion and penetration. On the surface, this handling method is very similar with the "stippling" of "New Impressionist ", but there is a big difference in the use of color in the picture. There is not a clear boundary between colors, which is fluid in the works of Xu Chenyang, so it will generate the aesthetic intention easily. At the same time, in the process of accumulation of different colors, there not only is longitudinal spread, but also the formation of a unique texture. Because of the pursuit of the coalition, in a sense, the whole creative process will be full of uncertainties. While the visual image from virtual to clear, from the inside out, from visual to tactile sense, the kind of mottled, and together with the linear modeling, make the work of aesthetic feeling a bit like a rock, there are many similarities with the traditional murals. In fact, this kind of picture language and visual culture psychology hiding in aesthetics fit quite well with the return to the oriental artistic tradition that artists hope.

　　The formation of his language style from the artist, the establishment of screen rhetoric way, generally there are two clues, they or bright or dark, interweave, throughout the different stages of creation. One clue is that it seeks nourishment from the painting of Medieval European, especially during the early stage of Renaissance and is also influenced by Russian icon painting. Another clue is the benefit from Japanese rock paintings and China traditional religious murals. The more internal reason why artists cherish their individual development trace and continually step forward in these two clues is that they want their paintings to be close to the inner connotation of western classical painting and to be more like the works in the early Renaissance which reflect the profound humanism. The pursuit of religious sense comes from the willing that artists do not want their paintings trapped by reality, and they want to leave their works some spiritual spaces.

　　Of course, for the artist, the scrutiny of painting language is a problem faced by all his life. If there is no clear language, it will not have a distinctive personal style. However, no language is perfect, and it has advantages as well as disadvantages. In the works of Xu Chenyang, there are obvious language conflicts and competition games among them. For example, linear modelling and color infiltration are difficult to control, but the interest in "Beauty" will necessarily reduce the spirituality of the works. For Xu Chenyang, it is not important whether contemporary or classical in painting. In his own words, the importance lies on "experiencing with the heart, painting carefully, understanding by painting, promoting by painting." He also said: "I hope my paintings can find a small peace in this chaotic noisy world", which indicated a positive spirit, small but beneficial.

　　note:

　　Peng Feng: Eternity and Moment-Book Review of The New Work of Xu Chenyang, and read Xu Chenyang personal exhibition catalog.