Yu Heng
Professor of Fine Arts at Suzhou University of Science and Technology, member of China Artists Association. His Chinese paintings have been collected by the National Art Museum of China, the Great Hall of the People and many national leaders, and his ink garden works are permanently inlaid on the New Great Wall in Badaling, Beijing. He has held art exhibitions in more than 20 cities across the country, held solo and group exhibitions in more than 10 countries and regions around the world, published 8 personal painting collections, 1 college art textbook, and had special reports on CCTV, Shandong TV, Jiangsu TV, and Suzhou TV.
Yu Heng: Win with a little "water".
Sentence / 倪熊
A northerner, when he arrives in Suzhou, can breed in Leshan and Leshui, and if the dripping water of time pierces the stone, there will be a phoenix nirvana that surpasses the eyes of the locals. Locals may have the usual aesthetic fatigue, or complacent self-righteousness, and thus lose the visual sensitivity of the discerning eye to discover beauty, while it is just the outsiders who are either ignorant and mistaken or unprecedentedly rare and strange, but the ignorant are fearless and light.
Just like Yu Heng from Heilongjiang, northern China.
For a painter or even for a whole, there are two things that affect his creation, especially the development of landscape painting: one is the difference in regional cultural character, and the other is the visual experience in the process of transforming traditional programs into modern forms, or traditional inheritance into individual forms. Whether it is the garden of stacked stones and water, or the picturesque smoke and rain, water is the soul of Jiangnan, and the goodness is like water. It can be dewy at night, foggy in the morning, rain in summer, snow in winter, soothing as a stream, chanting in a low voice, steep as a waterfall, roaring tiger and dragon, moving because of opportunity, living because of moving, advancing because of life, so there is infinite vitality. The character of water can be said to be the closest to the character of the Chinese, and the core of the most superficial Chinese painting of Chinese culture is the freehand ink, which is inseparable from the mountains and water colors such as "the peaks and mountains are obscure, the forests are smoky, and the continents are covered by Zhuzhu", and it is the same as the naturalistic aesthetic of Chinese culture.
The difficulty of Chinese landscape painting lies in the fact that the brush and ink are interesting, not only the innovation of the traditional ontological language of brush and ink, but also the different changes in the expression content, regional style and schematic structure with the development of the times, so as to form its own language and expression.
When you come to Jiangnan, you will need the courage to be reborn in the future growth history and development trajectory. It doesn't have to be reborn, but it has to be transformed into a butterfly. Yu Heng is such an artist with modern consciousness and cultural mind, who has both understanding and practice: turning the thousand-year-old river of history into a moment of life in a hurry, and turning the vast tradition of the sages and predecessors into the doctrine for my own use.
In the nearly 30 years of landscape painting that followed, Yu Heng inherited the traditional simple and elegant literati painting style, not so much focusing on the pursuit of verve and the dismal management of artistic conception, but rather the enlightenment of the enlightenment: the invisible is better than the tangible, and the love is lonely in the depths. The realm of water lies in its supreme "carefree, inactionless and invisible". The formless is "hidden under the nine cities, and can be above the nine heavens." "The invisible is the largest, the invisible is the widest, the invisible is the deepest, the water is invisible, and it can be all-encompassing. There is even a saying, "Since the mountain does not want to come here, the water flows to it." ”
The great truth is easy to explain, and the true understanding of the way lies in the individual himself; understanding the truth is to understand all the ways and touch the kind. In principle, this is the same as a trick of eating all over the world, but it is not the same category, but the invisible water and the wind can be seen against the trend; it is not that Yu Heng got the killer weapon of this martial arts cheat and is invincible, but in the modern Peking Opera "Red Lantern", Li Yuhe and Linxing drank a bowl of wine from his mother, and after drinking this bowl of wine, thousands of cups and thousands of lamps will be entertained. With this bowl of wine, you can deal with any kind of wine.
I believe that Yu Heng also used the greatest strength to enter it, and used the greatest courage to fight out.
On the one hand, it is necessary to break away from tradition and explore new painting languages and expressions of brush and ink. Mozi said: "The invisible is the most powerful. Water is invisible, water is powerful, and people are invisible, so people can become dragons. It means that the momentum of water comes from its invisible power. The invisible is the soul of water, and the invisible is the power of water. The so-called five colors of ink are actually the control of moisture, just like the control of heat in cooking. Yu Heng's works mainly include water towns, figures and landscapes, and after 2007, he has created a pure land with the theme of Suzhou gardens, cultivating temperament and cultivating the elements of the hill garden. His vegan ink painting performance emphasizes the relationship between water and pen, water and ink, water and paper, water and air. Let people be immersed in a state of selflessness that is integrated with the earth, which can be tasted, read, and appreciated. On the one hand, the artistic practice of sketching and creating scenes, Danqing is entertaining, and the mountains and rivers are swimming. Look at the source of tradition and innovation in ancient and modern paintings, and look at the famous mountains and rivers to clear the way. Traveling the mountains and rivers, climbing the five mountains, watching the four seas, exploring the five lakes, going to Tokyo in Japan, going to Vienna in Austria, going to Sydney in Australia, going to Sao Paulo in Brazil, going to Warsaw in Poland, going to Bucharest in Romania, going to The Hague in the Netherlands, he creates new forms of expression in his sketches, interprets the veins and trends of mountains and rivers, and the great beauty of nature into the mountains and valleys in the chest of the soul;
The reason why the infinite possibilities of landscape lies in the expression of the spiritual value hidden behind the landscape, and Yu Heng expands the field of expression with the unbearable light artistic expression of the feelings and understanding of nature, reality and life, absorbing some of the essence of foreign culture from connotation to form, and creating a new art form and style. Let the work glow with endless charm and quiet and elegant, light and empty charm, giving people a kind of elegant and fresh in its landscape presents a new aesthetic feeling, out of the dust, and quietly in it.
When Yu Heng came to Suzhou, it was still a northern scenery in the right year, majestic and heroic, and now he is leisurely and contented in the green mountains and green waters of the south of the Yangtze River, and he is already happy and happy.
Yu Heng now lives in a town far from the city, on the edge of the town. Farther away from the city, I hope to abandon carving, and pursue a state of relaxation, freedom and relaxation, if this is the admitation of art, it is more like the practice of transcending oneself; closer to the landscape, it undoubtedly shows his literary heart and ideals, and explores the inner spirit of the real mountains and rivers. There is a sustenance here, a bit of "the road is long, I will go up and down and seek".
Yu Heng also has his studio like other painters, the difference is that it is as empty as a coconut grove avenue, just like a gallery with some paintings hanging far away, some of which are even many, many years old. His garden is the mountains, the scenery of the garden returns to the taste of the mountains, but it is still the delicacy of the literati, the elegance of the literati: "do not go out of the city and get the joy of the landscape, live in the city and get the spiritual spring".
While skillfully connecting with nature, he not only sees the quality of life that connects the ancient and modern, but also activates the memory of his own life...
Suddenly remembered that Yu Heng didn't even seem to have painted the ice and snow that he knew well, but he had achieved the humanistic scene of ink and wash landscapes in the place where the Wumen school of painting originated.
As far as tradition is concerned, Yu Heng is innovative, while his ink painting is traditional.