Fester is Beautiful like Cheese

                           ——Talking about the Paintings of  Yang Jiayong

Yang Wei

Having a glimpse of Yang Jiayong's paintings, you’ll find them bright, gorgeous and splendid, but inside they are full of extremely scars and festers. This is a typical feature of materialistic Era. Different from the traditional society in which people got along well with nature, the contemporary society was constantly modified. People were toke off the nature, and lived in the mimetic reality that was highly materialized, the goods were packaged, the culture was whitewashed, and the political environment was filled with lies. People enjoyed the convenience of material prosperity, reveled in the vanity of the world of desire, seemed to be less concerned about what they lost behind. But the artists are different, they are the weatherglass of the times, the measuring instrument of change, and always able to penetrate the social identity, to reach the inner reality. And Yang Jiayong is such an artist, sensitive, delicate, has the responsibility and accountability. These qualities make him too cool to show the surface of the social problems, and more focus on mining the life experience, reveal the changes of the times and the psychological pains caused by over materialization. 

In fact, the performance of the painting in the sense of pain and ulceration is not Yang Jiayong's original. In the course of the development of Chinese contemporary art, the visual experience of this kind of pain and injury seems to have been hidden in the open process of Chinese society as a hidden line. From the end of 1970s the "scar art" to the end of the 90s the "youth brutal painting", artists, with their youthful passion, expressed the difficulties encountered in the process of time changing and self growth, and the resulting contradictions, anxiety, pain, confusion, loss and hurt. As a graduate of Sichuan Fine Art Institute (SFAI), Yang Jiayong, might have been affected to some extent, for that SFAI was one of the important source of these artistic thoughts. Despite of this, his works still differ greatly from his teachers. First of all, Yang Jiayong dug, criticized and reflected people's desire starting from personal feelings, rather than catered to a certain artistic trend. Secondly, he abandoned the concrete modeling, and usded images to capture the indescribable pain inside the heart. This made his works distinct from the past scar theme expression.

Yang Jiayong's painting language focused on self-expression. In his pictures, all the figurative forms were highly abstracted, left only the most striking visual focus. Such as a faint scar, a pile of bloody rotten meat, some gradual decay substances, etc. Complemented by vivid strokes and strong colors, it strengthened the psychological experience, and increased the visual tension. This   kind of symbolic expression and metaphor is a kind of abstraction of the image from the visual to the heart. It is more shocking compared with the true representation of objects, and can bring out resonance. Lu Xun once criticized some declining quintessence of Chinese culture with "swelling is as red as rose, fester is beautiful like cheese." Obviously, this metaphor and symbol highlighted the degree of redness and ulceration. Yang Jiayong understand this truth, as well. He expressed the desire of people, not directly portrayed it out, but refined it into the visual perception of scars and ulcers, thus formed an image of the picture not only strengthened the semantic criticism and reflection, but also made image painting more epoch significance.

Tongzhou

2017.5.8

作者：Yang Wei