Gateway to the Fairyland

Last year, I went to Wanzhou through Chongqing with a few friends, hoping to see how Three Gorges were being demolished. When we got to the riverside, the houses that were there before were long gone. Instead, brand new buildings were standing on the hill by the river, as unreal as a mirage. It was very foggy that day and the buildings were barely visible. It happened to be the National Holiday and many local residents had come to the riverside to witness the launch of a new bridge over the river. Seeing the happy faces of adults and children that were coming and going, somehow I was struck by an unspeakable feeling. The second day we returned to Chongqing in the evening, the buildings in this hilly city were all surrounded by colorful neon lights and floodlight. Riding in the car, I sighed with emotion and remarked that Chongqing’s evening was really like a bar…In recent years, the same kind of illusive picture can be seen in almost every place all over China. Today, we are indulged in the pleasures brought by modernism like never before, even though this sense of happiness is sometimes perched in the air.

Like many young artists, Zhu Hai lives and grows up in a time when one has to keep moving ahead without being able to pause and think. I first met him in the “11^th Studio,” in Huangjueping in Chongqing, where the Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts is based. “Huangjueping” has become an increasingly prominent art landmark thanks to the likes of Luo Zhongli, He Duoling, and Zhang Xiaogang, who are all important artists in the history of Chinese contemporary art. These figures have exerted a gradual influence over young artists like Zhu Hai. This kind of influence is evident not only in their academic legacy but in the fact that their success has reinforced the younger generations’ understanding of and commitment to art. According to a common viewpoint of the last few years, Chongqing is the hotbed for the new generation of cartoon artists, even though I have my reservation about such a classification. However, the fact that there are a group of remarkable young artists active in Chongqing is not to be overlooked.

In my opinion, Zhu Hai’s paintings shouldn’t be interpreted within the context of “cartoon.” I think that Zhu Hai’s establishment of his unique language and style of painting can be summed up roughly in four stages, while the “eye,” a specific and distinctive icon, has run through all his stages. A few years ago, Zhu Hai combined “eyes” and human bodies randomly to create a peculiar monster. The artist carefully depicted this uncomfortable image with great beauty. During that period, his paintings were mainly rather natural and powerful. The dialogue between the viewer and the works was full of psychological confrontation. There was always a sense of uneasiness with gazing and being gazed at. It was as Zhu Hai pointed out, “Look at this pair of eyes, without eyelids. It’s staring at me too so that I have no place to hide. But I also hope to find the reasons for my existence through such confrontation.” Zhu Hai attempted to relieve his terror and anxiety through inventing fantasies in his paintings, in the same way as he walked alone on the noisy streets of Huangjueping, through the crying out of vendors, into his studio to work on the canvas by himself. At night, he would travel by car to “Jiefangbei” (Liberation Monument) to experience the most fashionable “HIFI” life style in modern metropolitan culture. He was living an unbalanced life at times. As a result, his paintings from this period were beautiful yet conveyed an indistinct feeling of loneliness.

In the “Grey Series” that followed, Zhu Hai added instruments symbolic of science, technology and industrialization. Ice-cold metals, glass utensils from labs met with “strange creatures.” If the “abnormal forms” created by Zhu Hai were to be compared to living existences, they could really remind us of certain indescribable suffocation and even close-to-death cruelty. Zhu Hai attempted to evade the troubles of reality with icons that he fabricated. He was more willing to experience the truth and meaning of life in his surreal world.

In his “Flower” series, this way of expression was taken to a more extreme level. In Zhu Hai’s eyes, flowers are coquettish. He dissolved himself and abnormal forms into flowers on his attractive paintings. His works revealed a certain mystery of the Orient. In his paintings, the human was the eye, the eye was the flower and the flower was life. This nearly Zen expression demonstrated the artist’s longing for the “pure land.” Zhu Hai’s latest paintings such as “the Rising Mushroom Clouds,” are an attempt to construct a splendid and chaotic illusion of the end of the world. These works reveal the artist’s concern of the current climate and his anxiety over the unknown future.

In Zhu Hai’s paintings, the role of the artist was complex. He was the viewer, the painter and the creature in his paintings. The tension that this mixture of positions generates far exceeds the dimension of paintings and allows infinite room for his works. Sometimes, art is like a trap that drags you in but prevents you from pulling yourself out. As his works carry out abuses, Zhu Hai also bears the painful yet pleasant sensations of self-torture. This complex sentiment forever bothers and limits the artist. When the needle drills through the eyeball, you are “sorrow yet merry.”

Zhu Hai is an artist with humanist care and temperament, even though in his paintings, there are more and more hidden scenes, which are rather obscure, difficult to understand and read. I believe that this is exactly the appeal of Zhu Hai’s works and could be a direction that is worth pursuing for young generations of painters. Indeed, new science and technology and new media have provided a newer and higher platform for young generations of artists to dream and create. The awareness of young generations to revolt against such mainstream cultures as class, race and sex has begun to weaken and is replaced by their orgiastic consumption of culture. Instead, in their invented world, they transcend the given ideology of class, race and sex. Their works no longer bear the historical and cultural responsibility, too much of which their previous generations of artists have carried. They examine the influence of contemporary life on them in their own way and contest it with their sensitivity. It’s in this way that Zhu Hai has built up his own dream factory, occasionally opening a gate that leads to the fairyland for us. In the hollow room, in the floating air, it’s always staring at us…

 

By Zhu Tong on April 15, 2006

翻译者卢迎华

作者：朱彤