Ren Chuanwen
On a bright spring afternoon, I called Ren Chuanwen, who lived in Changchun, on the phone.
Ren Chuanwen is a famous oil painter and art educator. His paintings have been selected for many national art exhibitions, Chinese oil painting exhibitions, Beijing International Art Biennale, Chinese contemporary art documentation exhibitions, etc., and have won many awards. He has also held solo and group exhibitions overseas many times. His works are collected by many art museums and other institutions and collectors at home and abroad.
On March 19, 2022, through the "Other Shore Consciousness: Ren Chuanwen Painting Art Exhibition" curated by Li Hanying, the Shanghai Hong Art Museum was held, and I invited Professor Ren Chuanwen to give a painting art dialogue.
Golden Nile 1, 195× 125cm
Ding Xilin: In the long river of time, human painting art has gone through ups and downs and transmutations, and today it has become extremely diverse, figurative and non-figurative, shelf and installation, sound and light and fireworks, etc., and the artistic expression under the complex concept makes many people confused. You have been engaged in painting creation, art education, and aesthetic research for more than 30 years, how do you think about the significance of today's "painting"?
Ren Chuanwen: The art of painting began in the period of human ignorance and has been accompanied by it to this day. In the meantime, from divination figures and cave murals to religious story theme paintings to independent painting art, they slowly evolved and changed. It has never been thought of in the past thousands of years that today's digital technology has replaced or dissolved many of the functions carried by previous paintings. Today's "works" produced by the application of computer image processing or free combination are ever-changing, and they are unimaginable and unimaginable to predecessors. Because of this, the existential value of painting art today is qualitatively different from that of the past. On the one hand, as a "craft" of human beings, it has its reasons and possibilities for existence, on the other hand, I personally feel that its existence value lies more in the spiritual and spiritual realm of human talents that it transmits according to vision and craftsmanship, so it has become more pure. This is irreplaceable by any scientific and technological means. Some people lament: "Painting is dead" and "painting has come to an end", that is ignorance. Today's paintings have become purer and more spiritual.
Ding Xilin: You once summed up from the enduring history of classical music that "the core of artistic expression is the manifestation and enlightenment of the pure spiritual world." In your opinion, what should be the focus of the reconstruction of the glory of painting on the shelf today?
Ren Chuanwen: As I just mentioned, the role of painting no longer covers the function of digital images, painting is a visual language generated by "craftsmanship", transmitting a spiritual energy to the world. This is closer to music.
From the perspective of painting, reproducing and expressing the material life form in reality is no longer something that the art of painting itself needs to carry. Interior decoration or philosophical reading does not require "painting" to join in the fun. Painting itself is not competent to carry these things. The painting ontology I understood before, that is, the starting point of everything is "visual sense + feel", which transmits some spiritual and spiritual energy through visual graphics and color expressions. It's like Bach's music, which transmits some kind of energy in notes and rhythms, and I think that's the ultimate purpose of painting in the current digital age. Without this awareness, the pictorial art of painting, which belongs to the noble spirit, will be buried in the mass production of digital processing image tides.
Ding Xilin: Every time I look at your works, I read both and read them. The "surreal painting environment" presented in your works makes me feel when I look at paintings, similar to reading prose or novels, feeling time and history. What are your thoughts on the construction of "meaning" and "image"?
Ren Chuanwen: This question asked the idea of art examination creation, hehe, not very easy to answer.
The artist's creation is contributed to by many factors, and what can be said in words is always a small part. Painting is not deliberate for me, nor is it an act that can be "directed", so it will never reach the other shore of my yearning. Painting creation is to capture the opportunity of the unity of heaven and man, to connect the spiritual world on the other side with the time and years of personal life, to transform the invisible into the tangible, and to transform the object into the spiritual realm. The paintings of the ancient Chinese sages have reached such a realm, but unfortunately, not many people today receive the aura and original intention from the sages, and they have trapped Oriental painting in the quagmire of skill but cannot extricate themselves. I am aware of these drawbacks and consciously circumvent them. Painting creation is never "deliberate", and once it is deliberate, it will be finished, and it will become a fake. Painting is never a physical task, and there is no need to work hard to do it. I often meditate and feel that the objective world exists not only as wonderful as seen by the eyes, but also as much more. Go with the flow of the mood, go with the flow to create, and the things you paint are "walking in the heart" and have a realm.
Ding Xilin: Indeed, from the dreamlike paintings created by the lines, light and shade, color, space, etc. of your "Floating Life" series of works, I can "read" a certain meaning of life and touch the soul.
Ren Chuanwen: The concept of "this one" in artistic creation is very important, that is, you are you, he is him, and they are not confused or duplicated. I have experienced that real creation will consciously or unconsciously bring traces of the soul of the individual, and the same should be true of painters. I often say to myself in "contemplation" that behind the material world that we can see with our eyes, there must be a world on the other side that we cannot see with our eyes, which can also be understood as the world of the soul. Like streams of consciousness, dreams, and fantasies, these things constitute my individual perception of the world. In a world of mystery, my soul wanders through it. The success or failure of painting creation is ultimately related to individual cognition, cultural accumulation and the depth of practice. This is also often the result of the personality differences of creators.
Ren Chuanwen, Golden Nile 2, 195×125cm
Ding Xilin: Your works have a "northern atmosphere". Painters more or less exude "homeland consciousness" or "hometown complex". What do you think of this phenomenon? How does the formation of your painting style relate to your upbringing?
Ren Chuanwen: There will definitely be some kind of sense of home in the picture. This involves the concept of truth. Truth is one of the core factors in the creation of all art, including painting. Without a real foundation, what comes out of the hand can only be "work" and cannot be called "creation". As an image of painting art creation, its function is not simply to express the appearance of a mountain, a river, a love and a scene, but the painter to complete with his own experience, perception and state of life, during which the fragmentary memories of my growth process will always appear consciously or unconsciously in the creation. The so-called "homeland complex" is also born in this situation. Looking back at the 1980s, when there were not many cities in the true sense of China, everywhere was the appearance and state of "urban-rural integration", and it was when I was a teenager when I was just able to absorb the essence of the sun and the moon of heaven and earth, and it was also a time to blend personal feelings with the natural appearance of the outside world. At that time, the water was clear and blue, idyllic and leisurely, and the "homeland complex" rain was silently immersed in my spiritual blood. My paintings are not abstract but tangible, and the pictures contain spiritual expressions similar to those of the ancients according to the landscape environment, so in my future creations, I will consciously or unconsciously reveal the atmosphere of "homeland" and "hometown".
Ding Xilin: The Tang Dynasty painting theory has a saying that "the foreign teacher created, the source of the heart", which has influenced it to this day. How do you see the relationship between art and reality? And how to keep your creative acumen and find a creative path that suits you?
Ren Chuanwen: This question reminds me of going to the Potala Palace in Lhasa a few years ago. I remember that to visit the Potala Palace, you had to climb up the steps from the bottom of the mountain and go through countless steps to reach several large halls at the top of the mountain. The main hall is decorated with mandalas that are said to have been set up by the ancestors of the senior monks, which are built of round platforms with a diameter of about two or three meters, on which there are models of figures, utensils, scenes and so on. After looking at the mandala, I suddenly felt that the mandala city did not convey a certain spiritual realm? I also associate that the predecessors said that art exists "between the like and the unlike", and its essence is the state of connection between the spirit of reality and the world on the other side, and art or artist is the bridge or transmitter between them. The so-called "external teacher creation, the middle to obtain the source of the heart", the master of the creation is not to be created by inheritance, and the source of the heart is not just to feel the qi of creation, but in the sense of vigilance and prompting given to us by nature, which is the delicate relationship between the two.
Golden Nile 3, 195× 125 cm
Ding Xilin: Why did this solo exhibition at the Hong Art Museum be named "The Other Shore and Mind"?
Ren Chuanwen: I have always felt that art is the only channel connecting the actual cultivation world of human beings and the spiritual world on the other side. There will always be a sense of communication and presence with the world on the other side of the world, and I classify it as happiness. People are willing to continue practicing because they bear more suffering in this world because there is a god of art to support the soul and give a sense of happiness and comfort. What keeps the body running is water and food, and what keeps the soul alive is faith and art. I see the world, life and painting from this point of view. The name of this solo exhibition has no deliberate philosophical or literary implications, but only a flat and straightforward narrative. These paintings are what I want to say. The verbal images that come from the hints in my heart and the real world may be the other side of my heart.
Author: Ding Xilin
Editor: Su Zhan
*Wenhui exclusive manuscript, please indicate the source when reprinting.