Written by Wang Shuai
Xiong Yu is a scholarly artist, spontaneously academic. Speaking of spontaneity, he has been aware of looking into the infinity outside the finite window since very early. He does not belong to any specific school; instead, he just adheres to the academic spirit so hence will never use the tail of any school to decide his artistic brain.
Sichuan Fine Arts Institute where he pursued his studies is the sand of his techniques. Art College of Sichuan University where he works is the wind of his thinking. The variety of schools and institutions where he focuses his researches are his drifting clouds. Xiong Yu distinguishes from the majority of young artists; his ideas are more embracive and images are more pioneering than his peers.
Not all kinds of creation imply demolition. He successfully uses a glass of wine to blend with realism. Novel visual experiences and pictorial resources are the aides of his concepts. Realism is old yet real life is new. The cup of emotions is old yet the aftertaste of emotions is new. The skills are old yet the visions are new. Xiong Yu is old yet Xiong Yu is new. He steps out of the old threshold yet holds back for the new staircase, and his possibilities are therefore unfolded.
He offers us complicated backgrounds and numerous images in every work, and he endows them with a simple pattern, which is not only an ability of technique but also an attitude that isolates art from life. Yes, isolation. I refuse to utilise standard answers like “art versus life” or “art is higher than life”. Isolation is the active existence of passive spirits of this era: complexity is an objective portrayal, and subjective values are verified by pure quality. Because of isolation, all backgrounds are drenched in some homelessness.
I dare not affirm his metaphysical whereabouts but can track down his material comes-and-goes. His horizontal works that depict a group of characters subtly employ the techniques of Francisco Goya and Eugène Delacroix, those supernatural lights in particular, and strike a classical orderliness into the postmodern liberation, which momentarily pulses the romantic ambience of the picture. The toggle switch of romance is controlled by rationality from deep inside.
The angelic mind and knightly mettle scatter his works densely with poetry. However, this poetry is neither classical nor modern; it is a poetic error code strewn at random that bears an amorphous sense of future. On one hand, the innocent nature is instigated by the cartoonish style; on the other hand, the technological feeling is passionately attached to the metropolitan atmosphere. It is just the innocence painted with unreality that we generally carry as well as the problematic cities where we find ourselves ensnared. Xiong Yu inadvertently guides us on a travel that realises the shift from the cool character of Generation X to a quixotic stubbornness.
In front of a humble door, there blooms faint sorrow and he is doing experiments on eye expressions devotedly: the nervous eyes of an Egon Schiele, the gazing eyes of an Amedeo Modigliani, the dull eyes of a Balthus… they all present a stiffness, and he loses focus intentionally as a Yasunari Kawabata-ish softness dwells in the bottom of his heart. It generates a new frustration that accommodates a quietness wherein a pride lies contrastingly. The power of mutual repulsion casts our eyesight into a labyrinth and pushes our soul ashore, which echoes his academic background that he penetrates profoundly yet presents with the original essence.
Once the artistic techniques reach a certain level, discussions regarding the artist within the art world become very simple—is that my cup of tea? I like all tender surprise, silent meditation, gentle sleep-talking and distant mystery revealed in Xiong Yu’s strongly chromatic pictures. He steers clear of the direct experiences shared by many and, by interlacing the far and the near, achieves another sort of arrival under the name of art. As for the part he holds back, it is the space left for talent; it is the respiration of rationality, and moreover, the imagination of splendour and insipidity juxtaposed back-to-back.
At dusk 20 July, 2015, Tuiqiaoguan