JI LEI

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This exhibition presents a slice of a long experiment. In numerous formal experiments and psychological ups and downs, this is possibly the closest exploration to the stage of ‘cohesion’. Psychological field, memory, dream, reality, delusion.which eventually represented as the mark of ‘shanshui’. ‘Shanshui’ was detached from the scenery and intersected with more memory fragments, in which previous series of ‘Playground’ and ‘Insomnia Town’ were enhanced and various intranquil factors received a brief calm.

Seemingly I have felt certain impulse since creating the last series ‘Trans-land’. Such inexplicable impulse reflects as looming residual images of ‘shanshui’ : The sketch line comes from real-world streets, bars, and indoor scenes, and then, choosing an aberrant way without considering the subject of painting. In the picture, however, specious ‘shanshui’ often appear. I thereupon keep walking into the ‘shanshui’ to experience its folding space, elements, temperature and ubiquity...

The new stage of so called ‘lost trips of painting’ gradually mixed with the joy of wandering. I started not to be entangled with the problem of the fork, instead, settle for a map that may have no exit at all. Getting out of the maze, or receiving the settings of the maze, makes this long-term entanglement truly become an intuitive language game. ‘Trans-land’s the method. ‘Shanshui’ is seemingly the subject, but more likely a potential ‘language’, which becomes the core of this stage of my creation. I have not received training in traditional Chinese landscape painting and do not have enough courage to devote myself to the traditions of shanshui that are as attractive as black holes. So what I painted is neither real landscape nor traditional shanshui but a ‘possible shanshui’ as I regard. I am just taking the genes of shanshui in my blood to my life today, like carrying a ‘totem’ in the depths of my subconscious mind.

Text by Ji Lei. Press release courtesy A Thousand Plateaus Art Space.