Artist · Co-director and co-creator
不作 / BUZO
Biography
Exhibitions & Projects
- 2005 — We’re Leaving..., Suojia Village International Art Camp
- 2005 — Group Exhibition, Imagine Gallery, Beijing
- 2005 — Beijing International Gallery Expo, China World Trade Center, Beijing
- 2006 — 5×7: Size Determines Attitude, Pingyao International Photography Festival
- 2006 — 5×7: Size Determines Attitude, Songzhuang No.1
- 2006 — The Age of Consumption, Sartre Art Space
- 2006 — Group Exhibition, Western Academy of Beijing
- 2006 — Ruined City, Sartre Art Space
- 2007 — 4.3.2.1, Four-Artist Group Exhibition, Beijing Painters’ Village Gallery
- 2013 — Beijing Mini Art, Beijing Jiuceng Art Museum
- 2015 — Art Together, Poly Youth Exhibition, National Agricultural Exhibition Center, Beijing
Artist Statement
Beginning with life
Many people are afraid of skulls and of all the meanings that have been attached to them, but few take the time to understand that they can also mark the beginning of life. When my child was one month old, I made a painting based on their ultrasound image. At the center is the first sprout of life, surrounded by skulls. There is nothing frightening or morbid in the picture—it is entirely about new life taking shape, a completely fresh start. I later added flowers because I had already been thinking for years about life, death, and related questions. I refer here to Red (2014), oil on canvas.
Flowers bloom and fade, repeating the cycle—just like the cycle of life.
On making
I study traditional Chinese ornamental patterns and try to make work based on my own limited understanding of them. In the process, I discovered something more interesting: the repetition of forms. At first I saw them as lifeless patterns with fixed meanings. But once I drew them myself, the visual experience was different from seeing them in books or on websites. I wouldn’t say they were alive, but they gave off a kind of indescribable resistance. This is why, when people encounter such patterns in certain places—churches, palaces, places steeped in mystery—they can have all kinds of responses even without knowing what the patterns mean.
It is a kind of visual stimulation. But these patterns usually grow out of religious meaning. I cannot create new forms with mystical significance, nor can I change anything. A classic is a classic; it cannot be changed. So the direction I was taking then was wrong. When I thought it through again, I simplified and stripped away all meaningful forms until only one remained: the basic form. It is the root of everything. Everything is made up of this one basic form. I then repeated and recombined it endlessly, and in the end it was still a basic form—only enlarged. It was still itself; its essence had not changed, and yet everything had changed.
These individual basic forms are not merely patterns. They are the root of all things; they are an energy. They can be a statement, a proposition, a phenomenon, or simply a molecule. When these elements are merely repeated, they remain what they are, but the effect is utterly different. They can also be an emotion—fear, excitement, sadness...
Many people like to ask what you are trying to express, what the pattern means. When anyone sees something, the instinct is to know its intended meaning or value, but what they truly overlook is their own response. Perhaps my paintings have no meaning in themselves, and each form has no meaning. But I believe that everyone who sees them will have their own response. A hundred people, a hundred responses—then the painting has a hundred meanings. It will never dictate what people should think. That is what I want to express through the painting.