Suggestively subtle: on solo exhibition of Lin Hairong
Shine Art Space, 50 Moganshan
Shine Art Space, 50 Moganshan
Many years ago, my American friends always playfully chuckled with harmless racial tones about how all Chinese looked the same. And now, it is even more ironic to see how evidently all Chinese still looked the same: in how Chinese painters themselves had elected to portray themselves in duplicative look and in expressive unisons.
Even if the subject treatment may all be so remarkably different, the perpetual consistency of the same painted images can be irritable, intolerable and redundant, and when originality breaks off its edge of originality; you see one and you see them all. It can be irksome to look at these mechanistic, robotic, factory churned out pudgy or puffy dollies productively repeat in the same painterly manner and recycled in other painters alike. Of course, all this is purely an overview of visual narrative and generalized interpretations that reflect some artistic genre.
The genetic reproduction of these visual images does depict life in China in truthful, if not metaphorical manner. The ubiquitous echoes of monotonous images seem to prolong to reiterate, inevitable or not, the profoundly and deeply entrenched collective values and psyche about China and National Chinese, ensuing, possibly those overseas Chinese and descents alike.
In this case, Lin Hairong has continued to hybrid or compromise with the traditional visual form by very effectively repeating her contemporary subject matter or visual images. Majority of paintings are set with subject matters floating on the canvas plane, within their individual vast monochromatic backdrop of emptiness or void, while a countable number of paintings are only suggestive of three-dimensional perspective. An ever-lasting painting tradition, human nature as a part of the universe has always been portrayed this way.
Whether or not intended to downplay the overall presentation or simply a style of her own, Lin's very womanly subject is very revealing via her artistic training. All the paintings speak so strongly that the painter is a woman, all about her definitive gender role but more on her contribution of human strength.
She exhibits her multitudinal roles: sharing ideas with peers; marrying to be a good family pivot; commanding individual respect and winning admiration; affirming her faith to the family and exerting loyalty to the country. She dances, entertains, defends and works. She is an intellectual; she is modernistic; and she develops her personal wellness. Unquestionably, she is able to do all kinds of things like everybody else.
On closer examination at the paintings - painstaking in composition, sparing in color choice, economic in tonality, rather precise and tender in brushstrokes, earnest but solemn in painterly application, and fairly variable in thematic selection – Lin's paintings and its characteristic style and subjects all demand a form of respectable quiet charm and restrain with natural feminine attributes. With her as herself and as a painter, Lin is all simply subtle in articulating her understanding about the world around her.
Even if the subject treatment may all be so remarkably different, the perpetual consistency of the same painted images can be irritable, intolerable and redundant, and when originality breaks off its edge of originality; you see one and you see them all. It can be irksome to look at these mechanistic, robotic, factory churned out pudgy or puffy dollies productively repeat in the same painterly manner and recycled in other painters alike. Of course, all this is purely an overview of visual narrative and generalized interpretations that reflect some artistic genre.
The genetic reproduction of these visual images does depict life in China in truthful, if not metaphorical manner. The ubiquitous echoes of monotonous images seem to prolong to reiterate, inevitable or not, the profoundly and deeply entrenched collective values and psyche about China and National Chinese, ensuing, possibly those overseas Chinese and descents alike.
In this case, Lin Hairong has continued to hybrid or compromise with the traditional visual form by very effectively repeating her contemporary subject matter or visual images. Majority of paintings are set with subject matters floating on the canvas plane, within their individual vast monochromatic backdrop of emptiness or void, while a countable number of paintings are only suggestive of three-dimensional perspective. An ever-lasting painting tradition, human nature as a part of the universe has always been portrayed this way.
Whether or not intended to downplay the overall presentation or simply a style of her own, Lin's very womanly subject is very revealing via her artistic training. All the paintings speak so strongly that the painter is a woman, all about her definitive gender role but more on her contribution of human strength.
She exhibits her multitudinal roles: sharing ideas with peers; marrying to be a good family pivot; commanding individual respect and winning admiration; affirming her faith to the family and exerting loyalty to the country. She dances, entertains, defends and works. She is an intellectual; she is modernistic; and she develops her personal wellness. Unquestionably, she is able to do all kinds of things like everybody else.
On closer examination at the paintings - painstaking in composition, sparing in color choice, economic in tonality, rather precise and tender in brushstrokes, earnest but solemn in painterly application, and fairly variable in thematic selection – Lin's paintings and its characteristic style and subjects all demand a form of respectable quiet charm and restrain with natural feminine attributes. With her as herself and as a painter, Lin is all simply subtle in articulating her understanding about the world around her.
All smaller frame photos are from www.shineartspace.com.
Art Explication
Jeremy Tew
Hai Shanghai
May 18th, 2007
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