Gu Gu is a painter hidden in the city, she is not keen to participate in lively exhibitions, nor does she have large-scale works with large themes, and even comments on her paintings, "concept" and "meaning" these weighty words are not needed. The Japanese writer Haruki Murakami contributed a word to the modern Chinese dictionary: Xiao Qixing, which means small but sure happiness. Reading her paintings, you can feel that the content of her paintings is those "small luck" that inadvertently impress you in life.
Long black hair, flat shoes, gray cotton and linen loose dress, since knowing Gu Gu, she has appeared in a simple and elegant style, she pays attention to fashion and can adhere to her own style, has her own consistent attitude to life, and does not use a paintbrush to record the details of life that can touch the heart. Painting is also the same disposition, with an indifferent but delicate eye to observe life, the ordinary life scenes into the picture, familiar, kind, warm, no sense of distance, she paints pots and pans, painting birds parked on the boat, painting children and the elderly on the way to travel, recording their love for life, the momentary touch of life, conveying to the viewer ease and pleasure.
"Tibetan Girl" is Gu Gu's 2009 work, the painter uses the traditional brush stroke technique of thin lines and pastels to outline the image of a Tibetan girl in full costume, and her understanding of classical Chinese art and the accumulation of traditional cultural cultivation are infiltrated by layers of blending. The "Old Grandmother of the Mosuo People" created in the same period integrates the techniques of Western classical oil painting, the red turban contrasts strongly with the dark green background, every wrinkle on the face of the old grandmother has been delicately portrayed in Chinese style, and the fusion of Chinese and Western techniques has produced a strange visual feeling, the vicissitudes are quiet and the meaning is long.
The "Coast" series of works is an important stage in the transformation of Gu Gu's painting style, and after some travels, Gu Gu's subject matter is more abundant. Ink blends harmoniously with the transparent sapphire blue of watercolor paintings, and Westerners who do not know much about traditional Chinese ink painting appreciate her work without a distance.
"Sydney's Noonday Sun" freezes the picture on an umbrella and beach chair in the afternoon, the empty beach, the ink line divides the picture, the non-realistic shadow, although it is an exotic scenery, it can bring the viewer back to their own memory, reminiscent of the strong afternoon sun, people are taking a lunch break, a person sneaked out to wander the childhood time. The vertigo and drowsiness brought by the noonday sun are intertwined, which can bring people a surreal experience, just like The work of Baltis, Gu Gu also gives this feeling to this sketch, the seemingly careless perspective, the silent chair, the geometrically divided ink block, it seems to freeze the time at that time unchanged, recording the spiritual feelings with surreal techniques, the picture is objective, conveying the exquisite reality of sensibility.
The painter He Duoling said in an interview: "I think painting is a pleasant thing, everything in the objective world observed by the painter can be expressed, and the painter can embed his subjective feelings and his soul in this expression, and leave enough entertainment space for himself in this expression." "Gu Gu's works are relaxed, intimate, and pleasant. She prefers to look inward into the spiritual world rather than rush to express the appearance of external noise. Her subject matter is mostly a corner of daily life, an old man she met on the road, in her words, "the subject that she feels interesting and is willing to write down with a pen." Her inner interest in people and things in daily life makes her pictures full of joy and beauty.
Some time ago, reading the Jiechen blog, she and some photography enthusiasts set up a group called "Song Dang", in which she explained what "Song" said: "Everyday, subtle, joyful, elegant." The road back is long and long, and they walk slowly on the road, not seeking to arrive, but only wishing for pleasure. This sentence is very appropriate to comment on Gu Gu's paintings. Gu Gu's paintings are small and exquisite, no strong visual stimulation, not eye-catching, in the torrent of contemporary art in the form of visual and radical and other forms of strong impact, Gu Gu is like a hermit, do not seek to reach, do not follow various artistic trends, away from the current hot social and realistic grand themes, content with the quiet self's spiritual world, in her works, silent space and geometric division of the interesting composition conveys to the viewer the atmosphere of pastoral poetry, the painter will objectively exist the object to give himself a sense of life, Blandness is another beauty that means long.
Although Gu Gu's paintings are Chinese brush and ink, they are reminiscent of the Morandi of the West, which is also a small subject, but what jumps out of the paper is intriguing tranquility and intimacy. Her pictures are between the "likeness and dissimilarity" of everyday objects, such as "Seagull", the image is familiar to us, but the boat and the seagull are placed in a blank space, and the seemingly unreasonable position creates a non-realistic space, resulting in the interesting and unique aesthetics of the picture. This surreal approach of combining subjective construction and objective depiction coincides with Morandi in the West.
Morandi once said: "My paintings communicate a sense of tranquility and privacy, and what I value most is emotion." "Even in a simple subject matter, a great painter can still achieve the emotional intensity and visual solemnity that makes us instantly moved." Gu Gu's interest on paper coincides with Morandi's painting philosophy, which is also to find subject matter in small things, and extract artistic expressiveness from those familiar and neglected details of life.
Gu Gu first learned visual design, and then followed Mr. Sun Zhijun to learn Gongbi figure painting, with Mr. Duan Zhengqu to learn oil painting, with Mr. Du Dakai to learn ink, mastered different kinds of painting methods, her works are not bound by these art forms. She does not stick to the rules and forms of traditional painting, but absorbs and penetrates these artistic elements learned into the pen, casual and not random. Her works jump out of the traditional ink painting with ink color as the main form and color as a supplement, and instead let the large blocks of color occupy the dominant position, and the traditional ink painting integrates the visual sense of design and the lightness of watercolor painting. The pictures, brushwork and chapters she manages give way to self-perception and pure artistic beauty, while absorbing the nutrition of Western painting, it also retains the techniques of traditional Chinese ink painting, and integrates the two artistic elements appropriately.
Kong Xinmiao wrote in the preface to Antonio Lopez Garcia: "Whether an artist's creation is valuable is not to see how fashionable the form of language he chooses and how strong the visual shock he evokes; how many titles he carries that indicate social hierarchy; how high the price of the work is sold... Rather, it is to see whether his works have enlightened us to a new experience and a new perspective on the life around us. "Berlin Morning" is a work with a peculiar perspective, the subject continues Gu Gu's homely style, the picture layout paints to bring the viewer into the painting, together from the interior to peek out of the scenery, from the upstairs window to the street, the roof, the author boldly used two ink colors to divide the original slender drawing paper into three segments, because the darkness on both sides of the paper, but let the viewer focus on a narrower outdoor landscape in the middle, as if he was pulling open the curtains to look out, the ink color on both sides is concise, Only a little backlighting technique implies that the picture environment is indoor, and the brush concentrates on depicting the landscape in the middle part, arousing the curiosity and interest of the viewer, because the delicately depicted part of the picture is gathered into a narrow vertical strip from top to bottom, just like the camera shaking shooting, so that the viewer can pay attention to every small detail expressed by the painter, the intention is novel and unique, and it makes people feel more intimate.
Gu Gu is a painter who thinks while painting, she paints things that can arouse her enthusiasm, retains the freehand spirit of traditional painting, removes the local art since the Yuan Dynasty, literati painters express the tone of the bosom with heavy ink color, and emotionally control the flowing color of watercolor in the picture, this new perspective based on Chinese artistic conception deserves our attention.
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