Phase with one of the abstractions Li Gang
A horse that spans time and space
——Interpretation of Li Gang's "Horse Whisperer: Elephant Xiang" series of photographic works
Yang Lijun
How to innovate the creation of photography art, how to be different, how to reflect the unique photographic language and expression of the artist, so as to create a masterpiece with unique aesthetic meaning, this is the problem that every photography creator has to face. It can be said that it is becoming more and more difficult to make new ones. Scenery is difficult to shoot, documentary is also difficult to shoot. In the early years, in addition to some famous mountains and rivers, it is a place with lofty mountains and inaccessible people, which are rare because they are few; with the improvement of living standards and the development of information, not to mention the famous mountains and rivers, like the north and south poles are also crowded with photography enthusiasts, so everywhere you can see the sunrise of snowy mountains, autumn in Huangling, snow on the dam, penguins, seals filling the page.
When the "new scenery" came out, a swarm of bees was a small scene, zero-degree narrative, landscape hunting became a new popularity; documentary photography faced hundreds of millions of mobile phone users, and it was also urgent to explore its own way out. When "decisive moments" and "a picture is better than a thousand words" have become the main tendency of documentary photography creation, there are new creative methods bred from it: some are moving towards "activist photography", using practical and effective actions to change the life and destiny of the subject; there are those that move toward "multimedia", using audio, video and other means of communication to tell the story to achieve a more powerful communication effect; there is a "relationship" that expresses the various compositions and relationships between people and the environment, people and things, and photos and photos. In short, photography urgently needs a new breakthrough and a new aesthetic paradigm.
Snow Horse Li Gang
The development of art is driven by its internal laws, the purpose of art is to innovate, is to provide "defamiliarization" experience, as the Russian formalist Shklovsky emphasized, "the reason why art exists is to restore people's sense of life, is to make people feel things, so that the stone shows the texture of the stone." The purpose of art is to make people feel things, not just know things. The technique of art is to make the object strange, to make the form difficult, to increase the difficulty and length of time of the feeling, because the process of feeling itself is an aesthetic purpose and must be extended by means. Art is a way of experiencing the artistic composition of an object, and the object itself is not important. "To create a work of art with new forms and new aesthetic values, it is not how rare the subject is, but how to see the unusual from the objects that people are accustomed to, "violate" those common senses, common sense, and common things, transcend the normal situation, adopt a photographic language with new meaning and new vitality, and create "defamiliarized" works, which is the success of photographic art creation.
Out of love for horses, there are many photographers who shoot horses, both chinese and foreign. Most of them show the intuitive form of horses, athletic, heroic, majestic, heroic, powerful, and fast, while the works of the famous photographer Li Gang are unique. In the figurative horse, he saw the beauty of the horse part. The eyes, the ears, the manes, the stripes, the necks, the tails, under his lens, were independent, horses, not horses, but they saw another bone. Li Gang's horse, not seeing the whole, only seeing the part, but seeing the true meaning in the part, is like a grain of sand seeing the world, a flower seeing the kingdom of heaven; the spirit of the horse, the divinity of the horse, the sadness and loneliness of the horse, are all in it.
Phase and Abstraction No. 2 Li Gang
In terms of artistic creation, "defamiliarization" is the most rare, and Li Gang has done it. Li Gang's horse transcends the normal realm in art, "violating" people's habitual knowledge and understanding of horses, while its inner spirit is closely related, and this opposition and conflict constitute the appearance of the "defamiliarization" of his works, giving the viewer sensory stimulation and emotional vibration. He deviated from people's conventional understanding of horses, condensed the unique physical characteristics of horses, abstracted the meaningful forms of horses themselves, adopted a new photographic language in artistic expression, and created works with new aesthetic significance that transcended "image" and connected "phase" and "elephant".
His photographic works "Horse Wings And Mountains" series, through the horse and nature, horse and time, horse and space, life and death, out of figuration, abstraction, straight to the depths of existence, with poetic and philosophical meaning. "The unity of heaven and man" is an important philosophical thought in ancient China, "heaven" represents "Tao", "truth" and "law", and "unity of heaven and man" is in harmony with innate nature, returning to the dao, and returning to the root. "The unity of heaven and man" is not only a thought, but also a state. The philosophy of "the unity of heaven and man" has constructed the main body of traditional Chinese culture, the universe is naturally a big world, and man is a small world. Man and nature are intrinsically connected, so all human affairs should conform to the laws of nature and achieve harmony between man and nature.
One of the horses and wings is Li Gang
Li Gang has several works, the horse's back is like a mountain, the mountains in the distance are towering, and it is impossible to distinguish between what is a horse and what is a mountain in front of you and in the distance, and the mountain and the horse are surprisingly consistent in form. The mountain and the horse are both masterpieces of nature, a quiet and silent, majestic, as the wind as electricity, but also "horse wings even mountains", the mountain shape and the horse shape are one, the spirit of the mountain and the soul of the horse are one, which is not only the author's unique vision, but also reflects the author's profound understanding of the horse shape, horse state, and the spiritual essence of the horse, and let people really experience the feeling of "the unity of the heavenly horse" between the square inches. If the horse here is a projection of human emotions, then what the picture shows is the harmony between animals and nature, as well as the harmony between man and animal, man and nature.
The second of the horse wings is Li Gang
Li Gang's works depart from the heroism, majesty and beauty of horses that people are accustomed to, and focus on the loneliness, loneliness and melancholy of horses, lamenting the passing of life and the impermanence of time.
Horse wing even three mountains Li Gang
In one of his works, a horse with its back to us is a small dot at the bottom of the picture, in front of which is a gloomy and lonely road that does not know where to go, and above it is a dark, cloudy, gray sky, wind and rain, but standing, endless loneliness and desolation, but there is a faint light on the clouds, as if illuminating the road ahead and warming people's hearts. In the "Trilogy of Life", a dead horse lies reclining on a barren hillside, and the work with a blue tone, which at first glance seems to be a landscape, looks closely and finds that a group of small black shadows are slowly coming out of the picture in the distance. The cold moon in the sky shines, as if reflecting the millennium. This is both the passing of life and the flow of time, the mountains are silent, and the cycle of life is endless. In another work, several illusory horses wander through the forest, like the ghost of a horse floating in its habitat. The author uses several similar works to explore the eternal topics of life and death, reincarnation and impermanence. His death is also sudden, his sorrow is also painful, his thoughts are also deep, and the so-called blending of scenes is meant to be outside the words, but nothing more.
Li Gang's horse, in the ordinary, provides us with a new aesthetic paradigm, a new "defamiliarization" experience, and in this unique image, it sends affection and nostalgia, giving him the meaning of poetry and thought, which is Li Gang's uniqueness and his success.
(The author is executive vice president and executive editor of China Photographer Magazine)
Appreciation of Li Gang's works
Phase and Abstraction series
"Horse Wings And Mountains" series
Snow Horse series