Xiao Jiang's studio is located in the southwest of Shanghai in Shanghai's Songjiang District, with a long history and culture, known as the "root of Shanghai". In recent years, some artists who originally lived and worked in Beijing have gradually moved south here.
The "everyday" that Xiao Jiang's painting focuses on may be a red cloth that comes into contact, or a tree, a house, etc., which may become an opportunity to stimulate Xiao Jiang's painting.
These indoor and outdoor landscapes are collected and subjectively selected to form new images, and they are no longer specific places, scenes, people, things...
Xiao Jiang Kubian 200cmx270cm oil on canvas 2018
"I paint the norm of life, even dull to boring." When facing the scenery, Xiao Jiang's attitude is like this, and in the face of the images of the characters, there is no face, let alone emotion. He does not want the image itself to have too much "personality" and to be able to highlight a more subjective and personal form and color language.
The French thinker Debord proposed that everything in modern life itself is transformed into a kind of appearance, and everything becomes a "landscape" to be photographed. And the biggest drawback is the obscuring of historical and practical truths. "In this truly upside-down world, the truth is nothing more than a false moment." Because the scene creates desire, desire determines production, and material production, although still objective, is labored under the illusion and magic manipulated by the scene. In Xiao Jiang's paintings, it seems to be removing those appearances of conflict and arousing desire as much as possible, and returning to the ordinary normal, even the extreme of blandness - the void.
Xiao Jiang Room 100cmx120cm Oil on canvas 2021
| all kinds of conversations
The stronger the sunlight, the deeper the shadows. - Goethe
Xiao Jiang's new works between 2018 and 2021 can be seen from Xiao Jiang's solo exhibition "Mountains Outside the Mountains", and the series of works began in 2015. The exhibition is the artist Xiao Jiang's second solo exhibition at the Platform China Contemporary Art Institute after "Beacon without a River" in 2012 to observe new changes.
In the works "Room", "Room", "Noon", "Lying Man" and "Reservoir Side" in this exhibition, under the strong sunlight, the shadows are layered and changed, forming a simple and cold appearance. Like a prelude to a drama about to take place on stage in the theater, it is vaguely disturbing and alienating.
Xiao Jiang Noon 200cmx270cm oil on canvas 2018
"This series of works began in 2015." Xiao Jiang has been constantly advancing in the past few years. These paintings on coarse-grained linen are painted over and over again, and then scraped off by the scraper, revealing the color of the lower layer, leaving a part of the new color layer superimposed on it. Just cover it over and over again, hang it up, cover it again...
These colors that gradually precipitate in the dark and bright parts, and the thickly coated color layers of the bright parts appear brighter and brighter on the dry bottom layer. The shadows gradually become richer, forming a watercolor-like mottled and transparent feeling, so that they appear deep.
"I don't have a lot of colors on my palette, but I have some favorite colors, like napoli yellow and olive green." Yellow in the bright slope, showing a cheese-like texture, bright and cold. And the olive green in the shadows carries some subtle warmth. The two form a kind of color harmony and dialogue that calms the world.
He likes Cézanne's color and texture, but does not express the volume of the object, rejects the illusion of spatial depth and emotional brushstrokes, but compresses the space and volume, and forms a subtle and rich color gamut with the shape of different objects.
Xiao Jiang Room 100cmx120cm Oil on canvas 2021
Xiao Jiang summarized the shapes of buildings, trees and mountains into different geometric shapes, and the distant mountains and trees were often shapes with multiple triangular tendencies, forming the grandeur and power of the dark and green mountains. Shape and color are inseparable, and he paints on geometric planes, gradually forming the texture of the surface of the work. It is not only the lines, light and shade to express, but also the dialogue between colors is more important.
| images of memory
Xiao Jiang, who now lives and works in Shanghai, faces the gentle hills of Jiangnan and does not see steep and steep mountains, but his works are mostly magnificent distant mountains.
Xiao Jiang Uphill Road 90cmx120cm, oil on canvas, 2020
"In the work "Uphill Road", the pine cypress is also reduced to a triangle, which is unified with the mountain." Xiao Jiang's work is based on the needs of painting itself. Although not deliberately lyrical, it is also influenced by deep-rooted memories. It is just that they have been separated from their hometown for too long, and the memories in the subconscious unconsciously reappear in the picture of the work.
"My hometown is in Jinggangshan, Jiangxi." Although Xiao Jiang's creative method is not a naturalistic sketch, it is to correspond to the heart and recreate a new image. He also never deliberately lyrically expressed himself on the picture, but after the work was completed, he clearly saw that the emotion was already in it.
Xiaojiang Valley 100cmx240cm oil on canvas 2020
"When I go back to my hometown of Jinggangshan, I will find a lot of mountains there, just like the shapes in my works." In the "outdoor" part of the exhibition, whether it is "Mountains Outside the Mountains", "Cliff Reservoirs" or "Sketching", there are steep mountains with triangular black pressure. The shape of these rocks is reinforced to outline the shape of a hard-edged painting line.
"It's still related to my own memory, although I didn't deliberately think about it, but it was naturally brought out." In Xiao Jiang's memory, Luo Xiaoshan, with its dense forests and red soil, has always been deeply buried in the depths of his memory, affecting him.
Xiaojiang Cliff Reservoir 230cmx340cm, oil on canvas, 2021
| start with painting
The rough texture of the coarse linen, the straight geometric shapes of the building and the mountain, including the tall tree shape like a monument, together constitute the sense of power of these indoor and outdoor landscapes.
But the process of each piece being repeatedly painted and scraped off and covered produces traces of time and richness of color. And in the process of multi-layered coverage, a lot of contingency and unfinished feelings are formed. Form a static and mysterious impression.
Xiao Jiang Kitchen 80cmx60cm oil on canvas 2021
Those in the room, like tables and sofas, do not produce new meanings, and together as props in an everyday state. Coarse-grained linen as a material, acting in the same way with working methods and language, "such a cloth will create some obstacles to the painting process, will make me slower, slower." It will also produce a lot of accidental effects that happen by chance, and these accidental effects will inspire me. ”
Xiao Jiang Sketch Exercise 170cmx230cm Oil on canvas 2021
| conclusion
Xiaojiang's indoor and outdoor, seeing and being seen, are all part of the landscape. Under the cold and quiet atmosphere of the picture, there seems to be a conflict and contradiction between industrial machinery and soft human nature.
He consciously shifts his attention to the representation of his own subjective world, and through generalizations and trade-offs, produces a meaning beyond reality from subjective structure and color.
Xiao Jiang's carefully deliberated color gamut, the objective deformation of the image, the judgment based on the formal language, and the technical needs of color and composition; Subjective deformation and unpredictable contingency form a mysterious, strange, and unsettling outside of the normal.
Xiao Jiang's works construct "metaphysical reality" and "subconscious symbols", rather than the reproduction of real life.
Xiao Jiang Lying man 120cmx180cm oil painting 2020
| the exhibition site
Exhibition site
| artist profile
Xiao Jiang, born in 1977 in Jinggangshan, Jiangxi Province, lives and works in Shanghai. His paintings often end in the relationship between mountains, space and people, and the scenery in it is difficult to distinguish between morning dawn or evening, and a faint transmission of a trace of alienation. It may be said that the whole scene is a dream of the characters in the painting.
Main Solo Exhibitions:
Shanwaishan, Platform China, Beijing (2021); Interior View, Vanguard Gallery, Shanghai (2021); Straight to the Point, Vanguard Gallery, Shanghai (2021); Ordinary Things, Lion Language Gallery Hong Kong, Hong Kong (2020); Near at hand, Vanguard Gallery, Shanghai (2018); This Mountain, Mexico Space, Beijing (2017); Park, Big Space, Shanghai (2015); Along the way, Vanguard Gallery, Shanghai (2014); Object/Space, Off-Site Space, Taipei (2013); No River Beacon, Platform China, Beijing (2012); No Man's Land, Vanguard Gallery, Shanghai (2011)
Major recent group exhibitions:
2021 Spring Festival Painting Exhibition, Platform China, Beijing (2021); Platform China 15th Anniversary Special Exhibition, Platform China, Beijing (2020); Non-Stop, Duolun Art Museum, Shanghai (2019); To Youth, Platform China, Beijing (2019); Xiangwai - The Second Invitation Exhibition of the Figurative Studio of Shanghai University academy of fine arts, Liu Haisu Art Museum, Shanghai (2018); Lonely and Beautiful, Ke Fang Art Space, Shanghai (2018); Invasion future, Hangzhou Baolong Art Center, Hangzhou (2018); Northeast Baroque, N3 gallery., Beijing (2017); Decoherence, ShanghART M50, Shanghai (2017); Peking Spring, Ying Space, Beijing (2017); Drifting Facts and Truth, GALERIE HUIT, Hong Kong (2015); Ivy League Youth Program, Today Art Museum, Beijing (2014); Study Room, JEWELVARY, Shanghai (2014); ART 13 London Contemporary Art Fair, Olympia Gallery, London (2013); Shanghai Surprise: A Group Exhibition of Contemporary Art in Shanghai, K11 Art Mall, Shanghai (2013); "Jungle II - Diffuse Form" first project: "The Theory of Relativity", Platform China, Beijing (2013); New Dynamics, Lion Language Gallery, Shanghai (2013); Warehouse Story, Vanguard Gallery, Shanghai (2013); Studio, m50 Art Space, Shanghai (2013)
Xiao Jiang - Mountain outside the mountain
Duration: 2021.12.11 - 2022.01.23
Opening: 2021.12.11 15:00
Academic Host: Lu Mingjun
Exhibition Organizer: Platform Chinese Contemporary Art Institution