All my doubt was chasing the white horse walking away, and all my perplexity was as sleepy as the man lying on the ground. Su Xinping, who used to be familiar to me, suddenly became estranged as if our psychological distance was infinite.

　　In a moment I was struck by another feeling.

　　As the white horse heading to mystery indomitably, what left to the man was mere dreams. Perhaps under the heaviness of doubt and thoughtfulness I constantly encountered, my weariness, confusion and sleepiness thus evoked my dreams. Dreams, sometimes were extreme reactions of consciousness. Though as free as the wind in dreams, I had to elude abrupt shock, and worry about being awaken at any time. This is likely to be the most explicit miniature and symbol of theoreticism and rationalism. However, artists are artists, who can walk into mystery freely even out of dreams.

　　My feeling continued its dancing. Apparently, it was a self-motion of spirit the artist would refrain from responding to. I always thought, in the painting, there was some implications worthy of conjecture, for the mysterious attraction was at play all the time. The painting unexpectedly provoked greater estrangement between the actual artist and me, as if Su Xinping suddenly became an alien, and occasionally we would meet on a new planet, unfamiliar to both of us.

　　I started to read his theory of painting.

　　"In the painting titled as Man Lying on the Ground and a White Horse Inching Away, the horse slowly walking to somewhere deep in the picture symbolizes life and working of Mongolian herdsmen that are consistent with seasonal changes. Endless stretch of hitching posts indicates its experience, while the man lying in the lower part of the painting is a token of natural awareness featuring non-action. Contemplation, deprived of dreams, is sleeping. Integration of man and nature however is a state of the former, which inevitably engenders sentiments." Su Xinping in his place tried to clarify his intention of painting, which resembles the self-explanation of the prototype in a myth, attempting to fight with any misunderstandings. The artist remarked afterwards, "I had many trials to explicate my painting, but ended up with realizing that repaint another one would be easier, for it is beyond explanation." I remember Xu Bing once said, "Handing your work to the society is just like driving creatures into the market. It belongs to all those contact with it, instead of the painter himself." Once a painting comes on the scene, it is unavoidably subject to spiritual segmentation of the public. My fantasy at the beginning of this article is likewise.

　　The concept is embodied not only in this painting but also in other works. People he drew reminded me of Ernst Cassirer's statement that human is "animal symbolicum (or symbolizing animal). Objectively speaking, those characters he created do not possess features of the subjects themselves. Nevertheless, I was still interested in Su's explanation of his intended meanings. "Most of their days passed away in silent loneliness, which was complemented and balanced by jubilation and wildness."As a matter of fact, man's solitude revealed by Su is not confined to that on the steppe, but also includes that in cities of industrial civilizations, and his own invisible loneliness as well. In Su's eyes, man is a symbol of solitude! The white horse he painted is of the same connotation, a indication of loneliness. In this sense, it accords with what an ancient philosopher said, "A white horse is not a horse".

　　Su's painting has strayed far away from his former intentions. Such feeling was intensified by his remarks with a underlying summary. "Reviewing my works of recent years, I found almost all of them were painted with strong light. At first, I did in this way for its brilliant effect rather than consciously. Then, after a few visits to the steppe, I gradually realized that the sunlight often rendered me a sense of inexplicable delusion, with dizziness and fantasy. The world was static and unreal, followed by mystery and fear. With the experience repeated, after a while it naturally became a part of the picture and was out of my consciousness. Finally, I knew it was what I had sought and what I needed." His objective understanding of prairie people only remained in the work as an insignificant spiritual element, and most of its space was fully occupied by the invisible self-consciousness. A relatively implicit sense of distance with other people, and seeming agreeableness made his definite personality contradictory. His calm tenacity, nevertheless, is of great help in his artistic creation, and his appearance of thoughtfulness often protects him from undercurrents of criticism.

　　The most comfortable state in Su's painting is the stillness of life. The leaving white horse, indeed, represents no expression of "going away", but it conveys equal sense of standing upright as the five hitching posts standing around it. This is a motionlessness characterized by "walking posture". It is an illusion of a fine horse, whose "walking posture" seems to be frozen in the air. Impassively, Su related a illogic story to us. I wondered whether he removed its implications intentionally, or lost his original idea when describing a clue subjectively. Even though I used to be attracted by artists' general psychology of creation, I prefer its present pattern, and deliberately refrained from observing its preliminary sketch.

　　In terms of a "mental effort", Su integrated a subjectively perceived state of the steppe with that of a city, which undoubtedly overrode the glamour of putting things together. More importantly, his own state was also completely incorporated into the painting. As a young painter from Inner Mongolia but not a Mongolian, he is a silent audience of the past life. On the other hand, he observed the steppe's state from the perspective of the city's, and touched loneliness in life with his own calm tenacity.

　　He intentionally painted a background of unreal space featured with great complanation, purity and coldness. It is a illusory, boundless and mysterious space. Although the man, the horse and those hitching posts are composed as entities in the light of their perspective relations, even the slanting ray failed to pull all of my sensation back to the life in my memory.

　　In this painting, the sky, the ground, the man and the horse are in separation, unrelated, which are not perceived from traditional literariness or storytelling. Random images are placed in a space that never exits, a spiritual one the painter embraces in his real life. According to the painter, it is roughly a combination of the "imaginary space" and "physical space".

　　The physical space refers to real scenes within the range of people's vision. There are some methods and rules when such scenes are transferred into artistic images, for example, an object is big when near and small when far, clear when close and indistinct otherwise, etc. The principle of "three distances" (whose clues are plane, high and deep) formulated by Guo Xi, a Chinese painter of Song Dynasty, is another way of observing. Both western convention for focus perspective and Chinese concept of cavalier perspective are certain habitual rule and approach, no one is capable of judging which one is more authentic in painting. An imaginary space is a recreated space unrestricted by instant visual perception. This recreated space is further divided into actively and passively recreated ones, the former denotes a space fictitiously created by people, and the latter includes dream or illusion, etc. Generally speaking, spaces of a painting, though varying in their focuses, can not be separated from physical and imaginary space. Absence of physical space is less liable to arouse and stimulate the imagination of viewers, and without strangeness and perplexity of an imaginary space the physical space will become powerless.

　　No wonder the artist once said, "For me, dusk is the best part of a day, everything under the setting sun is pure, serene and beautiful, everything is still and timeless." In a word, the painter was rational when delivering a summary of himself, and tried to make himself understood in terms of concepts. Neither did he avoid technical problems, such as space, nor did he focus his attention on trifles. Being simple, direct, pure and explicit in painting, there is no need for him to emphasize "This is not what I mean, I intend that way." He himself has a strong feeling of such ease. "I found that I'm free to communicate with myself and my works with great preciseness and clarity, therefore, I started to converse with every stroke, every line and picture."

　　However, his fatigue was evidently embodied in his persistent efforts to divert himself from loneliness. He knew well that the jubilation and wildness were a complement and a balance for the state of silent solitude. However, never did he present transient "vigor" on the surface of life. The spiritual state conveyed by the painting was what he experienced in real life, in which the wilderness was calling for him, and hearty laughter could not reach the inside of him. Also, he was "accustomed to loneliness" and "gradually learnt to appreciate it". If, in his understanding of Mongolian, there was awareness of "conforming to nature", then he fully adapted to his loneliness. His attempts to explain life in physical space, in fact, were to explore the invisible self in imaginary space. I can understand such feelings:

　　I have tried to convey my emotions in a form that I can comprehend, that palatable to my taste and most powerful in expression. After inspection of my first works as well as long time trials and accumulation, I seemed to discover myself, in rather, I unveiled my artistic individuality. Various forms I had pursued or tried probably contributed to what it is now.

　　I have walked around a circle. The original Su Xinping familiar to me is one who is seeking for the best way of self-expression, nevertheless, the real him is a strange one that psychologically distant from me. Thus, his present work indicates more definite meaning. If man fails to communicate with heaven and earth, then nature will be isolated in the world. In the crowd harboring a sense of loneliness, absence of interpersonal communication will intensify individual's the sense of solitude. A saying puts that "Difference between men is greater than that between man and monkey."This surging undercurrent gradually brought "Like attracts like" into classical dreams. Does the naked man who stated that "Sky is my clothes, and house my trousers" not feel alone?

　　The white horse has gone, all alone, perhaps would disappear into nothingness. The sky, earth, man and hitching posts, existing in a recreated space, their silence was unbearable, but meanwhile they fully revealed messages Su implied.

作者：Yin,Jinan