陈 默
2007年4月于成都龙王庙
Guo Yan’s art carries with it a kind of elusive aura of the new city fable. It starts on the basis of the consideration of issues emanated from the process of urbanization. The monstrous fog of boisterous economic growth, and abusive expansion of information network, enshrouds the entire society. The rich continue to be rich, the destitute aspire to get rich, and the impatient steal. Bunches of corrupt officials grow on the wake of the fall of bunches of corrupt officials. Lots of citizens learn to be good and lots of them learn to be bad. Wealth tends to be concentrated in a small minority and the majority was poor. Ethics and morality have gradually got stuck at the level of books .Honesty and faith is more often than not are merely virtues of forefathers to be adored. It can be said that unprecedented vacuum and disorder has silently invaded without the slightest premonition of people. In circumstances which cannot be ignored or avoided, daily occurrences right under people’s nose are likely to be borrowed, from the angle of sociology, for the use of creative work. Guo Yan’s works of art can generally be divided into two stages: namely, the earlier stage of “The Purple Impression” series and the recent “Float” series. The basic framework of these two series was the city, and man and woman. The so called “city” concept was at the same time both clear and blurred. This is due to the fact that in the pursuit of profit, city and village are unified but farming is not. The boundary will naturally become unclear for being “unified”. The price for this is the dissolution of their respective charm for the sake of satisfying the vanity of the moment. On the other hand, man and woman are the basic component units of the body of various social strata, and are the source of various issues. This is at the same time the ever popular theme of literature and art, past and contemporary. To quote this writer’s words: “As we live in the midst of conflicting confusion of urbanization, we hold a primitive desire for Nature.” The primitive desire for Nature will intensify on the ever deepening of this kind of confusion. No wonder people are nostalgic because in the nostalgia, there are pastoral lyrics, family love, countryside partying and singing and dancing family relations. All these are almost like mirage. When we gradually travel farther away, or when mankind no longer live childhood, or when we are so “destitute” as to have lost everything except money, all we can do is to play the roles of spirits floating in the twilight of the city. Those men and women traveling on “flying carpets” are adorned with the moist warmth and seduction of purple. There are hidden sickness and risks of grey. There are fabulous weirdness and romance. All these, managed by the precise language of the artist, and presented and characterized pictorially, have consummated the definite outcome of causation.
Chen Mo
April 2007 at The Temple of Dragon King, Chengdu
