Thoughts of “Letter” Readers
2020.06
Thoughts of “Letter” Readers
By Wang Jiang
When it comes to the creation process of artist Chen Dongfan , the Forgotten Letters 2020 boast relative particularity. What are behind the fascinating poetic flavor, abundant imagination and adept skill of these works are their inseparability from and association with the current reality.
Special “Letters”
For long, artist Chen Dongfan has demonstrated great ambition in his painting practices. In August 2018, he created the Song of Dragon and Flower – a public painting that is 61 meters long and has an area of 4,800 square feet -- along Doyers Street, Manhattan Chinatown. Colors, brushworks and symbols are freely intertwined in the daily space, and disclose poetic and natural intelligence, becoming a wonder suddenly appeared in the city. Public painting is merely part of the creation system of Chen Dongfan , and his easel works witness the constant accumulation of creativity and the in-depth advancement of painting language. They often have broad size, intense emotion and high-key form just as his description in Refuge, his recent solo exhibition held in New York (January 30 to May 1, 2020) -- he tries to find the “confrontation and integration between the artistic conception of calligraphy and the destructive power of scrawl”.The project of Forgotten Letters 2020 demonstrates peculiarity in his work system. These paintings are small in size drawn on the seemingly light, thin yet tough Chinese-style letter papers. The images in the pictures are more specific and the contents are vividly symbolic, displaying the response to the current reality.
These are letters written by me with painting language. I can make nothing of the delivery address and recipients. These forgotten letters are my personal helpless resistance, and the emotion I have to recount and also want to conceal.
Chen Dongfan , 2020
The artist describes the special works with a kind of poetic rhetoric and regards them as the “letters” sent to the audience. Yet, what we cannot ignore is the realistic context that generates such peculiarity. The works are created in a special period and location – New York of this time has become one of the centers of multiple crises. COVID-19 is fiercely attacking this city, where some people have lost their life in the epidemic. In the same time, Freud’s death triggered radical protest march, and the racial conflict and deeper class contradictions are escalating constantly. For months, artist Chen Dongfan has been severely limited in life, and he has prudently practiced home-based epidemic prevention together with his family while managing to continue his whole-new creation practice. His artistic production has shifted from studio to home, and although “home of this time” is not a regular creation venue for him, it has offered a new opportunity for him to rethink the relations among art, self and society.
Letter Papers, Paintings and Titles
The shape and structure of Chinese-style letter paper have constituted the basic form of these paintings. They have nothing to do with the oriental prospect of mailing a letter; rather, they have interestingly combined with symbolic painting theme. Here, letter papers – the base –make the paintings overlap the meaning of"letters".The encountering of oil paint and letter paper endow special smoothness to color, allowing the paint surface to showcase a kind of pliable and tough texture.
He just painted single color on the edges of letter paper evenly to set off the “core of painting” – here, any possible image follows subconsciousness and revives; mankind, wild animal, angel and demon automatically generate from perceptual color and brushwork; imagination and judgment can finally identify their configuration. The way of depicting these images is always planar, shadow is absolutely simplified, while shape and color assume the modeling responsibility. Yet, sometimes, certain style in modern art history is embezzled for his own use. His control of visual rhythm is also free and relaxed, the part with sparse and thin pigment shows the pattern of the letter paper itself, and is loose yet breathing; the color lump of background is often added with decorative stippling, which enriches the rhythm of plane. Mostly, the inscription with capital letter is placed below the “core of painting” like the logo of a brand, becoming the important part that forms the visual impression of the works. However, everything in the picture is not all of the works. It must be emphasized that when we read these pictures, we should not ignore their inalienable “attachment”.
The titles of paintings are not explanation, and the paintings are not just the illustration of the titles. The relationship is poetic.Rene Magritte, 1979
In the project, the titles have become extremely important components of the works of Chen Dongfan . By reading the titles or making a survey of the sources, the audience can experience the more inherent and complex meaning. They are often derived from the name of some literatures, music and films, and when they are embezzled, the specific meaning and inherent impression carried by the words form a deep intertextuality with the pictures.
Reality as Footnotes
(Four Rules of Brief Annotation)
When you read in detail each and every letter paper, you can realize that every image has its realistic meaning, and some of them are linked to the current survival context of Chen Dongfan .
COVID-19 – the red keynote brings tense emotion to the picture and also refers to politics in a self-evident way. The figure in the picture does not have specific face, nor does it have the reference of identity or population. The outline of people is dynamic, whose mouth sprays a large number of droplets like water torch, and the dense punctate brushworks manifest the image of virus, with terror pervading in the space. Since the outbreak of the epidemic, the popularization of epidemic prevention knowledge has been rapidly conducted in audio-video media, and “droplet transmission” has become a medical term grabbing headlines. Its simulation view widely circulated on the internet has successfully stimulated the public’s imagination of danger.
Swamp – An oddly-shaped wild animal is standing at the center of the picture, and its disproportionate thick and long neck is exactly like the huge penis, with the head being dim due to redness and swelling. At this moment, the territory at its foot is sinking, and the surrounding marsh is endless. The rectangular pink background is arranged with black lattice as if insinuating the sexual implication in politics. The title “Swamp” echoes with the same-name reporter biography, witnessing and recording Trump and his party members who pollute the political circle with wicked manner and power. “Draining the swamp of Washington”, the former landmark election slogan, appears somewhat ironic at the moment.
No Time to Dream – The white horse on lawn is often seen as the image of the white race manifesting wealth and power. However, in the painting, it is described as a sinister image looking askance at the dark figure at the bottom of the composition. Its face causes people to think of “yelling” figure. The title comes from the album of Charles Bradley, a Negro soul singer. One of the songs – The World (Is Going up in Flames) sends the voice that “I can't turn my head away, seeing all these things … Gotta be a better world”. It responded to the suffering and struggle of the black people in the 1970s, reminding that social evils still remain in the post-civil rights moment era. But for now, radical resistance is occurring for a better world.
Go Stand in the Corner – He wears a crown and is stark naked, with the form showing distinct animality. Go Stand in the Corner is derived from the cold jest in English context, meaning to describe and scoff warm in the corner. Seemingly, it has become the self-mockery of the artist during home-based epidemic prevention. The painter in foreign land and people in the corner are experiencing and looking on the destinies of the city. Perhaps, “home of this time” is the land of freedom and autonomy he can only select, and is also the field domain where he can govern imagination.
When I am still thinking the realistic footnotes of these “letter papers”, we can already recognize the reality closer to exhibition that due to strict epidemic prevention and control and the worsening bilateral politics, it is hard to get the ticket for the flight from New York to Beijing. Chen Dongfan had to give up the plan of being present at the opening ceremony. Since the day before yesterday, the epidemic in Beijing has showed the sign of second outbreak, so some plans are undetermined. But I absolutely believe that the art circle has looked ahead the “art in the post-epidemic era”. If we say art is foreordination, then I have found the optimism and poetic flavor of the artist in group foreordination from the paintings of Chen Dongfan.
Beijing, June 17, 2020