Lao Shang and I studied together in the Oil Painting Faculty of Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts for four years, from 1984 to 1988. I didn't know why he should be called "Old" Shang though he was then very young and nobody found it improper. However, when the former students of my class are getting old with years passing, we find that Old Shang is still as vigorous as a young man. Not contented with things as they are, he has come to Beijing from Hangzhou to further his pursuit of art. He can really be described as a man "extremely active". Not long ago, I heard Lao Shang planned to hold an art exhibition in the "798 Art Area" in Beijing. Soon he asked me by telephone to write an article for this exhibition and sent me some photos of his recent works. To tell you the truth, although I have had some contacts with him in recent years, most of the things I know about him have nothing to do with art. Occasionally he gave me a ring and told me some irrelevant things. I was really ignorant of so many works he had produced with dogged perseverance.
　　When it comes to Old Sang's painting, I would like first to give a description of the way he produced a painting when he was at the academy. In class, Old Shang would sit quietly and thought deeply before a large canvas on the easel. He seldom took up the brush. He only occasionally added a stroke to the canvas. Then he stepped backwards a pace or two, looked at the canvas, pondered for quite a while, and added another stroke. He would paint and then erase something in this way without haste. Sometimes, when the class was over, you would find that only a few strokes were left on Lao Shang's canvas. In our class, Shijian Jing and Lao Shang were opponents when they were studying at the academy. They were always quarreling with each other.
　　Shijian Jing liked to cast ridicule upon Lao Shang: "Don't pretend to be reserved, you fellow. You simply cannot depict the object accurately."
　　Old Shang would retort, "You don't understand. I am depicting a realm."
　　Perhaps it is due to Old Shang's unique impression of things that his paintings, whether realistic ones in his university days or abstract ones at present, always keep a distance from this world, a distance that makes Old Shang's paintings and himself waver between the real and the unreal all along. I find that "empty" is used most frequently in the titles of Old Shang's works. In his works Sunyata, Emptiness and Form Inseparable, Empty Hills, for example, I seem to have sensed the uneasiness at the bottom of Lao Shang's heart in the half-empty dot-like or line-like strokes. Perhaps he wants to free himself from worldly worries through the empty hills. The work I like best in all abstract paintings by Lao Shang is Transformation: Dedicated to My Father, in which Lao Shang's lines penetrate the plane of the painting and bring you into his world. Here Old Shang has transformed his deepest feeling to the true freedom and emptiness. This "emptiness", however, has its own soul.
　　Wish Old Shang's solo art exhibition a success!

Beijing, July 22, 2013
(Lu Xiao: professional artist, Pingjun Shang's classmate at the academy)

作者：Lu,Xiao