Temptation of Tranquillity (1994)

He Jialing

It is a mysterious adventure - herds of goats come here from somewhere unknown and migrate to a distant place at some direction that we don’t know either. What makes these creatures endure the tiring trip and venture to this weird and dangerous cliff?

 

The series “Herd of Goats” is one of the representative works by young painter Yuan Jinhua, which takes herds of goats in the plateaus as the main story line and develops dramatic complexity in parts: goats falling into blue lake or deep valley. The herds watch the victims with fearful eyes, as if there are gods capturing their souls. No matter it is the blue lake or deep valley full of grasses, both are equally filled with temptations. Together with the misty sky and grey tone, the paintings emit a sense of mystery and unease, especially the lander placed in the scene that highlights the grotesque and tragedy.

 

Yuan said, “I have no purpose for painting but just for fun. Perhaps it is the natural presentation of my attitude. I feel tired and I cannot create good painting if I paint with purpose.” It looks as if these absurd realistic works have come from his fingertips, which do not need to be described by too many words. Yuan is not a ridiculous artist, but he really spoke the truth. Indeed, it is his strength to have “fun” in his paintings, which has been shown in the Series of “Bird” thoroughly. In Series No. 1: in a bush where trees resemble limbs of people a group of swans raise their heads high quietly, but a sense of horror emitted from the tranquillity. The yellow eyes seem to wait for a change while on the tree a pair of frogs are mating. This “technique” has undoubtedly broken the original authenticity of the scene and relieved the visual burden from emotion, adding freedom to the scene. In Series No. 2: a waterfowl wrapped its beak with its neck in a background made of naive children’s chalk painting. The scene is humorous and rational. In series 3: two cranes winding their necks are eating a frog which protects itself hard with hands, as if the frog is the painter himself. Such ridiculous“employment” comes from Yuan Jinhua who is not good at ridiculing, which indeed eclipses those painters who ridicule deliberately.

 

Jean Dubuffet, a French artist, said, “The intellectual value we believe our culture contains does not meet the true operation of our thoughts. Our culture is an unfitted dress.”

 

Those conventional art languages in tradition cannot cover the thoughts of modern young painters to express their emotions through painting nowadays in China. Painters today have greater creativity than their predecessors. Thanks to different experience in real life, tolerance of modern culture and expansion of artistic criteria, Yuan could have great “fun” with his works freely. Thanks to the tough experience from student to community, from dream to reality, Yuan expresses uneasy feeling to certain crisis of reality in addition to having “fun”, as well as resistance to multiple temptations of the reality. Comparing with his earlier works, he has shifted to absurd realistic style from depicting mannered style of minorities. No matter in terms of expressiveness or depth of thoughts of the works, he turns to be more mature.

 

It is a mysterious adventure. What kind of mysterious power is driving these groups? Are they tempted by the mysterious tranquillity of the future? Whether Yuan implies the future of his art? We have no idea about these. But, his second individual art exhibition following the last one in Shanghai Art Museum is undoubtedly an adventure. We look forward to his success.