Solo Exhibition Enclave Contemporary, Shenzhen
Duration: 2022.6.5-7.16
Address: East, B4, North District, OCT-LOFT, Nanshan District, Shenzhen Guangdong, China
Shadow Boxing
Zhang Er
In composing the images that comprise his oeuvre, Jiang Xiaoyu likes to focus his artistic attention on a single figure, which causes the internal space of the painting to stretch out and unfold as one’s gaze zeroes in on the form of its subject. The many boxers that appear in Jiang Xiaoyu’s paintings, be they lunging forth in attack, recoiling in defence or collapsing in defeat, are all caught on the canvas in a pure crystallised moment of physicality and will. Panic or indignation can be seen in the boxers Jiang Xiaoyu creates, a certain tension and struggle, but one suspects that the opponent they are facing is a hypothetical foe, each punch they throw merely a fist hurled into the void.
Jiang Xiaoyu’s paintings do not follow some preconceived design. They tend rather to draw their inspiration from fragmented impressions, whether from everyday experience, scenes from films and literature, or local news events. This aleatoric, improvisational approach means that Jiang Xiaoyu is always consciously excising the narrative dimension of his subject matter. By reducing complexity wherever possible and emphasising the abstract dimension of the persons and objects he paints, his art acquires an imaginary quality whereby shapes and colours take on a life of their own. As such, the ethereal figures in his work, divorced from the subject matter that inspired their composition to become a confusion of contorted lines and bubbling emotion, are all the more psychologically vivid and complex.
The spiritual scene presented, richly expressionist as opposed to directly representational, perhaps inadvertently reflects a real group of people, those compelled to express the inner workings of emotion, to provide a genuine if partial view of the broad spectrum of the psyche. However, the completed work also appears to be using the aesthetic experience to interrogate its surroundings. Is revealing the depths of the psychological landscape still an effective method for engaging with the problems of our capricious contemporary age? Are our attempts to understand and react to the profound contradictions within us, the moments of entanglement and conflict between other and self, not doomed to be as futile as a fist punching thin air?
Jiang Xiaoyu enjoys imbuing his works with an absurd, ironic, cynical or uncanny allegorical quality, but the vibrant figures he paints also have a certain innocent, endearing, perhaps even coy character to them. However, the solitude of growth and the emptiness of life permeate all his pieces like a dense mist, a sentiment that reappears in the lines of a contemporary poem read in local dialect: this is Chongqing / green leaves / have started growing on the trees / have you / started growing larger / breasts.
Facebook
Instagram
WeChat 微信