Container of Memory: Ideas, Methods, Images

Abstract

We have entered a “post-printing” era. The dissemination of information and images has become more diversified and complex, and traditional printing is facing new challenges. How can we both preserve tradition and transcend its borders? Contemporary printmaking can be used as a kind of “synthetic” art to separate from the traditional printing process and image reproduction, which will change the inertial thinking that printmaking is only for printing. Reproduction is no longer the most important attribute of contemporary printmaking, instead diversified, mixed, and crossmedia art practices are the future. In my recent works, I have combined the engraving of the woodcut matrix with oil painting. The raised black lines and colors with rich strokes create a subtle space in the seemingly flat painting and bring a unique formal language and visual experience. My process references the procedural characteristics of printmaking and divides them into several independent steps. First, I do not emphasize the replicability of printing. The layout is engraved but not used for printing; and the wooden board (matrix) with rich knife-mark texture becomes the base of the picture. Second, I use the ink for printmaking instead of paint to draw the colors. Finally, I use a roller to ink the raised part of the picture and black to highlight the main structure of the picture, thus completing a unique composite material painting. This creative method relies on unique tools and painting language, mixing the indirect expression of printmaking with the direct articulation of painting. Using the language and modes of ontology I explore the potential of printmaking and regard different production techniques and visual forms in printmaking as the most valuable parts, which inspires me to highlight the unique artistic expression and aesthetic characteristics of printmaking. I depict figurative and flat urban landscapes. In my opinion, the city is not only a space for daily life but also a container for storing history, culture, and individual memory. In Western art history, landscapes were long used only as backgrounds until Caspar David Friedrich first transformed the landscape into a mental image and a metaphor for the psychological state of human existence. My Parallel Lines series of works focuses on the daily landscape around us but one in which there are no traces of people in the familiar sense. The absence of people is a metaphor for the mental state of many urbanites. In the face of China’s rapid urbanization and development, the transformation in the urban landscape results in a huge impact not only on the visual but also the psychological. The gap between dreams and reality makes people have a strong sense of strangeness and alienation from the city they live in. The Once Upon series of works are based on photographs I took while traveling in Hong Kong. Its crowded urban spaces have typical postmodern characteristics, but it wasn’t the typical high-rise buildings and dazzling billboards that I found compelling. Instead, I chose a street corner animated by ordinary people’s daily lives to represent a highly structured social space.