Flowery Valued Ashes：A Deeply Profound Realm of Creative Painting - Yan Chao

by Xia Ke-Jun (Professor of RENMIN UNIVERSITY of CHINA)

　　There is a unique discovery revealed in Modern Art, which is an existence, or to say it's waste, like ashes. Modern Art has no longer always been complete things as objects, but to experience the world with debris. The ultimate rule has no longer existed, and how to make those chaotic debris into beautiful works is being a challenge for it. There might have healing inspiration uncovered even under ruins, as while Benjamin saw the ruins arising by the new angel of Klee, he sensed a breeze coming from heaven on his back swinging the wings of the angel. Indeed there is no such imaginary of angel wings or heaven breeze for Chinese artists, but we had been embraced by our splendid civilization and fine arts, those slight and poetic flowers blooming above the branches and showering under the moonlight. However, these heritages are merely relics and debris in the inane and melancholy sight of modern citizens among the latter-day tragedy. The pretty flowers and fruits had withered, and they are old good memories which had turned into ashes and gone with the wind. The tradition, has been destroyed by modernization, only can be reconstructed by sincere efforts through one's inner power of artists. However, it will never be a complete piece. The artist must search the essential element which are sort of "valued ashes", from debris for inheriting the indestructible, silent, and deeply profound essences. The object itself holds profound silence that couldn't be discovered directly, and it needs artists who owns the same quality to reveal it. If Chinese art finds out the own identities of itself of somethings, and the eternity of nature again, this indestructible "profound silence" must be the key.
　　How can the "deep profoundness" of beauty be rediscovered again among the modern diversely fragments? If it is possible to be recruited in painting, the invisible deepness will be showed in different method. As the western abstract painting discovered the dark and unfathomable "invisibility", Chinese art must rediscover a new invisibility and face the ruined objects again.
　　The artist, Yan Chao, who gets started from the dusty ruins, leads painting into an invisible profound abyss.
　　Yan Chao used to study painting, but he majored in cultural heritage in the university, and instead of being one of major artists who overlook those traditional elements, he has better position to look into them. Those traditional images and materials such as lacquer and so forth are definitely the heritage which has been neglected or even abandoned by our modern people. Facing the heritage happens to be facing the remainder of cultural history, as the existence of "valued ashes", which is known as eight-broken image, a gathering of broken pieces, valued objects, poured wastepaper basket, and so on, then to draw broken fragments of historical relics, stack and compose all into graphics. Thus a new painting wants to keep the original broken and dilapidated status, no matter it is an ancient bird-and-flower painting, is no longer an intact presence, and it can only be as wrecked valued ashes remaining in the memory, or worse status as left embers. However, art must sublimate an unrivaled beauty and brilliant astonishment from a pile of debris, make the foul and rotten into masterpiece, and there the painting of Yan Chao did it.
　　His paintings are mixed with some different materials; with heavy oil painting pigments to show the meaningless piles on one another of those broken waste and debris; with black lacquer to imply the darkness of objects; with thin and flowing propylene to hint a slight vitality; with seemingly random brushworks to present the residual status. And yet, how can the inevitability of sense be revealed within the seemingly occasional random? Contemporary paintings are not merely some casually occasional display, it let the occasion equip with accuracy and uniqueness of texture. There are forms of hints within subtle details, and the expression that motivate pigments itself is the key. Therefore, he combined oil paint with propylene, so the thick oil paint and the thin propylene are able to develop more subtle details between the drawing and canvas. Moreover, the lacquer which has been neglected by modern people is also being applied. To paint with lacquer, its pitch-dark color activate the depth and the thick heaviness from the painting upon the texture, especially make it deeply profound. At last, the approach of abstract arts allow the painting merely to present a sort of faint image, or "afterimage", which is a residual status of objects and images, but the shining and profound inherence is remained implicitly.
Taking the piece "Dusty Full Moon" in 2013 as an example that the moonlight shadow cast in a orange and blue flower covered with dust. Definitely a great painting is contrary to vision, cause the moonlight shadow will never be so much shining upon flowers, especially in such a dark background. However, the bright light leads our attention to the graceful shiny flower, and the black and purple branches stretch to the night with the painfully sharp figure and hiding into the obscurity of the night. While everything is on the occasion to dust, the painting properly express the poetic image of bloomy flowers in the spotlight of moonlight, and still the blur withering shadow covered with it.
　　The power and attraction of his paintings lie in: it completely draws you into a confused, cluttered, or even more like into old cotton wool, miscellaneous status, and describes details of this uncertain objects in the meantime. The more chaos, the more details hiding in it. It is definitely a challenge for abstract style paintings. Basically his technique is extended from abstract art, but it has to present a hint image at the same time, that requires very subtle treatment of brushwork. On the other hand, it also requires having a fine control of brushwork to express misty, and even in order to show the classical Chinese poetry, it must enter the dark side, where the depths of flowers are, and the objects lying in the ruins glow mysterious twilight and shine the broken things glorious, then the metaphysical realm of " with light as dust" is reached, that the broken things are within inherent dignity, inside the cotton waste, there are flowers blossoming, and paint the beauty of reversed moment when it paused, it hesitated, and it deplored.
　　Extension from abstract expressionism, how does it be more slightly profound and poetic? His main theme is Chinese traditional flowers, and to express both the blossom covered with flowers and corrosive and exfoliated effect all together. The mottled rhythm of time is sticked on the painting, makes the opposite eternity and short existing all at once, beauty and withering concurrent, and the influence of painting thus glows. More importantly, he attempts to discover its own language of painting. The problems he is pondering are: Is there any new possibility for painting? How do I stimulate new a technique for painting? The key for abstract painting comes from the direct impression of pigment itself, and gives it full play to the texture and sporadic surprise. So, how does it express the inherent profoundness. The profoundness needs to be stimulated by a perceivable individual, and it is Yao Chao, who combined oil painting with propylene. The sticky and thick oil painting and thin and flowing propylene are converged masterly and processed color and texture extremely subtle. Meanwhile, he also add another material, lacquer, in order to increase a heavy and thick texture. Especially the heavy dark lacquer makes black color reek of poetic elegance and spiritual energy. Within the variegated scraps, looking for a certain image be generated, and searching for imprinted marks of objects from ruins. Or to indicate where the signs are by means of random brushwork, as the sleeping objects head toward to the sense of texture and material rather than abstraction, and it is an suggestive afterimage, a scent, or so to speak that the afterimage is not the prototype of origin, and it is tracks that formed while the pigments are flowing, quite a similar possibility. Perhaps the aftertaste of ink inspired the artist, and it seems the afterimage still keeps the warmth of the dream, whispering in the darkness, and very fascinated.
　　The Chinese style of valued ashes paintings of Yan Chao awaken a new contemporary debris aesthetic. The ashes can be as magnificent as flowers, and withering can also be germinated. The secret of art is to make our sense reversed, and to make the dumped pigments be renascent freshly by internal combustion into as ashes. The saving passwords hiding in the nature has found by him. Like the "green moss", traditionally it implied to the time, acquired a new poetic sense. (Here the green does not necessarily to be green, but should be a sense of lush green.) The green marks that under the shadows of flowers; the green moss growing everywhere that inspires youth to be sentimental of sudden aging; the singing under the autumn breeze is demonstrated vividly and subtly by a lifelike brushwork, and the gentle affectionate flowers wander and tangle in the abundant colors for a while. Painting deeply conveys a parallel paradox of green color and green rust, the branches of flowers gracefully and crosswise convoluted shadowed sparsely on to the flowers, and they are all silent records of wasting years. By the sparkling flowing brush, and by catching the exactly atmosphere and halo, old vicissitudes and bright growth meet a unity, and bring out a new modern outstanding artwork.。
　　The paintings of Yan Chao seems has an ability to gather the internal power from the artist's love and care of debris on scattered brushwork. Painting is the last transient guardian for beauty, which listen to the breath of flowers, guard them during the night, and await until the dawn to reach a deeply profound realm of uniting things and I harmoniously as one. indeed his paintings are the hidden evidence of those deeply profound fragile objects.