ZHAI LIANG

Having experienced his own leaping thoughts and wandering, Zhai entered a new progress of thinking and accumulation. For him, “SLOW”, the diametrically opposite way, acts as a reference for his art. In arts and literature, from his point of view, “SLOW” exists in an indistinct way. Throughout history, the spiraling and forward process of times seems to be slow. Maybe, “FAST” is just an illusion? Or, perhaps “SLOW” is only a yearning for idyllic family life against this rapidly changing society? Following this clue, Zhai created a batch of new works, which will be shown in a solo exhibition with the name of “SLOW.” Exhibition opening is July 22, 2017.

In his new works, Zhai made some important shifts in his methodology of painting by simplifying the narrative structures, and strengthening the experiments of brush strokes and picture’s textures, through which he strove to make direct association between ideological contents in “SLOW” and visual perception. For more direct depiction of characters, he discarded some graphic details, such as facial expressions, and adopted the logic of brushes instead of the logic of images to redefine a character.

In view of this, he restudied the master of the Northern Renaissance - Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s masterpieces by learning the interactions between colors and brushwork, together with Jasper Jonhs’s solutions to stroke borders. When Zhai talked about his creating experiences, he realized that his works are not that thick as Jonhs’s, but both their works end with sudden peace regarding their treatments of the color borders, no matter how trivial the strokes are. Such presentation of brushworks, as the reflection of his exploration in “SLOW,” is indeed a kind of practice in action. Perhaps, the edge of brushstroke and the border of artist’s inner world are the same thing but in different dimensions?