Painting of Thought

Written by ZhaoYaoPace HongKong  2015.01.15 - 02.26
Painting of Thought is a very apt and fitting title for these works. The two books that provided the source images for these paintings say the following on their covers:1. A magical book full of challenging wisdom, geniuses around the world are playing 1000 Thinking Games. Why are Japanese people so smart? An American had a sudden realization that thinking is built through play. (A must read for the never-surrendering Chinese. Nanhai Press, 2005.)2. Top international thinking games to rapidly unlock your mind's potential. The 600 thinking games played by all the top students in the world will help you grasp effective methods for enhancing cognitive abilities, heightening powers of observation, analysis, logic, deduction, judgment, imagination, creativity, memory, thinking and action. The more you play, the smarter and more successful you will become. (600 Thinking Games from a century of Harvard students. Huawen Press, 2009.)From the first painting, Painting of Thought has a sense of mission. How do we look at a painting? How do we understand a painting? How do we create a painting? This series approaches fundamental questions of art from the perspective of painting, particularly abstract painting. Unlike conceptual art in the general sense, this series is not expressing certain criticisms or concepts but instead practicing criticisms or concepts. First, everything here is readymade. Readymade images, readymade colors, readymade fabric, and a readymade understanding of painting. Furthermore, these readymade understandings and concepts of painting are produced by these readymade images, forms and materials. This also includes the understanding and ways of thinking about painting produced by existing art history education and artistic experience. The various visible visual elements and invisible abstract thoughts serve as the fundamental elements of creation, just like the colors and brushstrokes of painting, and they are combined together according to an internal logic and order.Painting of Thought, being constructed atop a purely logical foundation, is both serious and playful. The removal of the playful aspects of the images, and the use of stacked layers of acrylic to build up an aura out of the glossy sheen, are not intended to produce that sacred aura of traditional painting but instead to imitate the radiant sheen of plastic children's toys. The artist is playing with the sacred aura not to make the profound superficial but instead to use this process to bring the sparkling sheen of plastic, which permeates the everyday experience of contemporary society, into the painting and to elevate it. This, together with thickness and sheen, are integrated and materialized by a purely abstract logic. The aura that busts forth from this is the aura of ideals and abstraction. Meanwhile, this materialized aura is also a form of resistance and balancing against the criticality created by pure reason and abstract logic. These works use this resistance and balancing to transcend painting and criticism, and to return to a more metaphysical level to discuss and practice more fundamental issues regarding art and culture. The relationship that emerges here between criticism and resistance is the dialectic relationship between form and content.Created using a method akin to a television series, Painting of Thought is a forerunner to the 2013 exhibition Spirit Above All. It marks my earliest creative practice to explore the dialectic relationship between form and content. Painting of Thought is sometimes treated as a series of abstract installations inserted into the system of painting. Just as my other series are constantly created and enriched, this series applies a reverse logic to constantly expand and enrich their meaning and content as it grows continuously.