Li Lu: The spiritual landscape of daily life
(Comment: Chen Wei, Director of guangzhou art fair art committee)
Flowers, strawberries, potted plants... Li Lu's series of oil paintings, for audiences who like to appreciate drama and storytelling, Li Lu's series of oil paintings, the subject matter seems to be "unremarkable" and is not easy to accept. The painter does not show "too far" events, people or large scenes, but pays more attention to a certain detail of life, a certain node, and points out to us the various images of daily life.
Bloom | 60×60 cm, oil on canvas
Li Lu's series of oil paintings is more like frame-by-frame photographs. To say that it is like a "photograph" is not to put forward from the degree of reflection of the work to the real world, but to emphasize the power of the images contained in the work. Since photography entered modern life, we can find this power in images. Therefore, when I first watched Li Lu's "Hour of Light", the painting interpreted "time" in the form of photo collage, to some extent, it was the same as the image power of the photo's function of recording life and preserving memory.
Hours of light | 150×150 cm, oil on canvas
The smallness of "Hour of Light" also hints at the expressive theme of Li Lu's works: you and me who are close at hand, the details of life. Her flowers belong to the mall's florist, derived from the streetscape, and stay indoors in lazy potted plants. Li Lu put out the beauty of "can exist" in life, which is the life observation diary of a person with a good heart. The public seems to form a fixed impression of art, thinking that artists only like "poetry and distance", in fact, art can also be a familiar landscape in your eyes and mine, and it can be life here.
Bloom | 60×60 cm, oil on canvas (partial)
Rose · Rhythm 2 | 60×60 cm, oil on canvas
Perceive the subtle changes in daily life, and at the same time, it is not the traditional "outward" but the "inward" gaze. Li Lu's works express the spiritual landscape of daily life. If you use the novel as a metaphor, the still life of the traditional painter, like Balzac, tends to describe the home and decoration of the character's living place with great interest, and strives to highlight the social identity and status of the character through a detailed description. The modern painter's brush blurs the scene, focusing more on the expression of the overall emotion and spiritual atmosphere, not having to pursue "material reality" so much, but thinking about how to express the real mental picture, which is very close to the colorful and colorful psychological changes that Woolf presents to us when facing the world around him. In Li Lu's "Strawberry" and "Morning" and other works, she is curious about the elements that make up life, and thinks that it is unique, with a "filter" to re-examine, she finds the calm and concise form of life - this is also the form of beauty.
Green Dog | 60×60 cm, oil on canvas
Morning | 60×60 cm, oil on canvas
Strawberry | 80×120 cm, oil on canvas
Li Lu excavated this bright, clean form of beauty, so that her figure paintings also have corresponding characteristics. Simple bright colors simplify a lot of detail and preserve the most basic block surfaces. Unlike the traditional portrait painting, the pursuit of delicate, round light and shadow effects, the turn of the block surface is simply direct and not prominent, making the only protagonist in the picture more prominent visually, the face of the character is simplified and exaggerated, and the composition is influenced by modern photography, focusing on the face of the character and enlarging the communication details between the two people. In the "Pleasant Interaction" series of oil paintings, the moment of the interactive action of the characters is recorded, the bold colors get rid of the visual reality, obey the real mental activity state of the people in the painting, and the image power of the frame-frame photo is once again highlighted.
Pleasant interaction | 60×80 cm, oil on canvas
Far from the simple imitation of nature and cutting into life from a concise and neat perspective, the painter Li Lu has mastered the unique form and language of beauty, and she uses a suitable and comfortable way of painting to tell what she sees and feels, showing the touchable poetry and rich and interesting spiritual landscape in contemporary life.
Artist Profile
Li Lu, born in December 1978, is a French artist. Graduated from the Affiliated High School of Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts, Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts (bachelor's degree), The Department of Plastic Arts of the University of Paris VIII (undergraduate), the Department of Plastic Arts of the University of Paris VIII, majoring in Contemporary Art and Multimedia (master's degree).