Cross-cultural experimentation under multiculturalism
Text/Fu Wenjun
As the name suggests, it is taken by hand, from Song Sushi's poem "The Second Rhyme Kong Yifu Collection of Ancient Sentences and Gifts": "The beauty of the former body is only a king, and the hand is natural." "Its synonyms are handy and easy to come by. Just as the themes I directly embody in my works, I use the cultural symbols of myself and others, and use the artistic language of different time and space to juxtapose the seemingly unconnected multiple cultures to generate new meanings.
"The Confucius Institute with a Hand", Fu Wenjun Oil on canvas, 150x150cm, 2012
"The Bell That Comes to the Sea", Fu Wenjun Oil on canvas, 150x150cm, 2012
I don't need to elaborate, but anyone with a basic educational background can realize what I describe in my creation. In "The Confucius Institute at Your Fingertips," I depict Confucius, a representative of traditional Chinese Confucian culture, standing on the ruins of the Berlin Wall after the fall of the Most Popular iPhone in his hand. The reason why I chose Confucius, the iPhone, and the Berlin Wall as the main artistic symbols is nothing more than because they are the representatives of traditional culture, consumption and popular culture, and Western history. The juxtaposition of the three may seem a bit ridiculous, but how much of the traditional culture known to the public has been reduced to the current fashion pastime? How much of the established history has been dressed up as a nonsensical clown?
Of course, some friends have seen my work and defined it as traditional Chinese culture going abroad and playing a role in the history of the world. I don't mind how the viewer defines my work, it's important that I make it clear that I'm trying to cross the border on culture.
"38 degrees north latitude", Fu Wenjun Oil on canvas, 150x150cm, 2012
"One Way to the West", Fu Wenjun Oil on canvas, 150x150cm, 2013
In another painting, "The Hand-Picked Bell Goes to sea", the Chinese folklore of Zhong Kui, who can fight ghosts and drive away evil spirits, rides on an aircraft carrier representing the frontier of high-tech. The vulture with the traditional Chinese ink penmanship towers above the 38th parallel. I organically juxtapose Chinese and non-Chinese, traditional and contemporary culture, history and politics to form the basic elements of my creation, and use the traditional Chinese freehand language and the Western classical realistic language as the basic technique of picture expression. So that the picture has a visual effect of virtual reality, the cross-cutting visual sense can more fully interpret my creative intention.
In contemporary visual art, Western-centrism and the control and fusion between different cultures are of particular complexity. The substantive process of contemporary art creation is actually an individual behavior based on an understanding of aesthetics. The aesthetic basis is an export product with Western culture. Although each country has its own cultural traditions, as far as Eastern contemporary art is concerned, its various concepts and connotations are not entirely the natural evolution of aesthetic traditions, but are more accepted from the West through colonialism.
"I don't know the depth of the hand", Fu Wenjun Oil on canvas, 150x150cm, 2012
"Testing the Waters and Lakes with Your Hand", Fu Wenjun Oil on canvas, 150x150cm, 2012
On the one hand, this history of change is that China's contemporary art creation relies on imitating The Western center, but it also makes our culture break free from its self-enclosed traditions, and its own traditions and foreign cultures are integrated with each other. Just as I combine Chinese freehand ink and sketching as a fusion of realism in my works, this integration and game promotes the development of traditional Chinese creative concepts to keep up with the times and adjust its new state at any time.
Many people have proposed that our current traditional culture was promoted by Western dogma and in accordance with Western views. Such cultural colonization has made the development of the nation's own art other, and the art itself has become more and more fake, with a strong artistic form, and is deeply at the mercy of market effects. Therefore, good artistic creation should get rid of the impure things attached to art, so that art can develop towards the normal state of self-sufficiency.
"Overturning the River and the Sea with Your Hand", Fu Wenjun Oil on canvas, 150x150cm, 2012
"Blue and White Porcelain Plate with Hand", Fu Wenjun Oil on canvas, 100x100cm, 2012
However, this does not mean that we should return to the artistic state before the globalization of western economies, but that we should grasp the essence of our own culture and recognize the cultural exchanges and fresh blood brought by Western society to the third world. Thus creating a contemporary culture in a pluralistic landscape that can operate and be used in today's real society. Whether it's for the East or the West, whether it's dealing with tradition or the present.
The reason why I named my work "Handy" is precisely because I created the idea of making a cross-cultural practice in a multicultural context. Whether in the technique of the picture, or in the form of expression, or in the subject matter elements and concepts of expression of painting, it can be oriental or non-oriental; it can be contemporary or traditional; it can be popular or popular; it can be someone else's or its own.
The key to the problem is how the subject of aesthetic cognition knows and understands them. In my opinion, we really don't need to mask one cultural pattern over another, one form instead of another. The fusion of multiple cultures may be contradictory from the outside, but from the inside, it is a dialectical statement. This expression does not lead to the loss and confusion of cultural meaning, but on the contrary, it will form a new possibility of interpretation and expression.
"The High Places That Come with Your Hands Can Overcome the Cold", Fu Wenjun Oil on canvas, 150x150cm, 2012
"Eyes on the Eye when the Unitary Time Comes by Hand", Fu Wenjun Oil on canvas, 100x100cm, 2012