Interview｜Yuan Yuan

2022/11/24

I. Latest Exhibition

1. This exhibition features seven paintings that you created from 2020 to 2022. Let’s talk about the stories behind these seven new works.

— Are these scenes real?

It’s not a life drawing. But it seems impossible to imagine outside of the visual experience, it’s always something you’ve seen before or déjà vu. The way I organize my images is somewhere between surrealism and romanticism, usually trying to build a space that exists neither only in reality nor entirely in the imagination. Sometimes it is unexpectedly more real than the space we meet in the flesh.

— Which piece of work’s creation or story is particularly impressive to you?

There is a particularly different painting, “Effort Will Triumph”, which my brother has collected for many years and brought out this time. It shows two dummies in a memorial hall, and the objects they used, displayed together like a set of painted still life, with colorful little tropical fish and turtles under their feet, and dead leaves in the jungle. The composition comes from my favorite German Renaissance painter Grunewald, and the title is adapted from Guevara’s famous quote “¡Hasta la victoria siempre!

–These 7 pieces are all large scale works, which one took the longest time to create and why?

In fact, no matter how big or small a painting is, as long as it is still in the studio, I will keep wanting to paint it, adjusting it here and there, unable to finish it, like an open space, just unable to close the door. It is strange that although the painting is still and silent, squashed and flat, a good painting can make people look at it endlessly, and every time they look at it, it is like seeing it for the first time, and they never get tired of the endless details. This kind of face-to-face viewing, of course, is no longer the main way of spreading paintings these days. So the one of these pieces that has been in the studio the longest would be “The Art Gallery Restaurant”, and at one point I wondered if this painting held up, as I copied the still life on the table, and the marble floor, from the classical paintings in the gallery. I remember when I first arrived in Florence, I went to see Masaccio on the wall. The stone buildings painted by this genius hundreds of years ago were wonderful to look at, and I was surprised to find that the street buildings in front of me were the stone palaces depicted by Masaccio back then, after three turns out of the door. The whole Europe is an art museum, inside and outside the painting, sometimes difficult to distinguish.

–If you were to recommend one or two works, which one would you choose?

It is quite difficult to choose, because it is not improvisation, very rational works completed in the studio for a long time will come to a state of equilibrium, it is difficult to compare between them, each piece has advantages and disadvantages, ten paintings in the studio for example, choose 1-2 pieces of paintings that do not work, it is very clear, but the poor ones usually will not be taken out for exhibition.

2. Why did you choose the name of the work “Under the Canopy” as the theme of the exhibition, and is there something special about this work? Please tell us about the background and process of creating this work.

Understory does not mean literally, but refers to the layer of plants and shrubs, lichens and mosses that grow under the forest canopy. The branches and leaves that unfold at the top of the trees form a kind of roof, often with only a few rays of light passing through and no longer capable of illuminating objects. Due to the lack of light, living things become subtle, delicate and fragile, fleeting, only on the scale of a seasonal rotation, or a few years, rather than decades. The eerie stillness of the light in this work, like the word understory, is richly layered and corresponds to Under the Canopy in a particularly poetic way.

3. You visited the cell of Al Capone, the head of the Chicago mob, in Philadelphia’s East State Penitentiary, and then created Al Capone’s Cell. Why did you visit Al Capone’s cell in the first place? What did you see and how did you feel during the visit? Why did you think of creating a work like this? Tell us about your idea of “transforming” the cell.

Because my best friend lives in Philadelphia, I happened to take a tour of this granddaddy of modern prisons, a giant concrete jungle where prisoners are designed to be held separately in solitary cells, each with a small skylight at the top that casts a little light, suggesting that God is watching. When a person is held in solitary confinement for a long time in this dark place, will he or she be like a monk who has lost all his or her thoughts and become a monk, or will he or she be reborn in the light of the phoenix. Ten years later I finally went to St. Mark’s Monastery and saw each of Angelico’s small meditation rooms, which were also dark, closed rooms with only a small window, connected by a long canal, like a prison. In fact, “Under the Canopy” is also taken from one of these small cells.

4. What are the commonalities among these seven works? In other words, what have you been focusing on more in the past two years, and have you changed?

Maybe it’s the darkness. Berlin is a city that spends most of the year in the gloomy and cold winter, which suits me especially well, because when it’s rainy and cloudy, I feel peaceful and protected by a curtain and forget the passage of time. The room was also dark, but instead I saw more things shining and emitting light, especially the world on the screen, which was also all clear.

5. This exhibition also carefully selects some works from the past decade of 2012-2022, how did you select these works?
— Is there a certain clue or a connection with the new works of these two years? Please give us some examples.

There are several threads running through it. I worked with the gallery for a long time, and I was quite lucky in the end that there were only one or two discrepancies, and I was able to retrieve basically everything I picked, so maybe the important things are not too far away from you in the dark. I don’t know how to explain them, but I hope the audience can see them in one exhibition at the same time.

–What does the tree canopy mean to you in “Effort Will Triumph”, created in 2015, which also features a tree canopy?

Creating delicate shadows, either dense or receding, the filtered light goes downward, inward, and diffuses.

II. Creative Related

1. You studied traditional Chinese painting and calligraphy in high school, are you still deeply influenced by it in your creation/concept? How does it manifest itself? (Give examples of specific works)

I have not studied Chinese painting and calligraphy systematically.

2. The Western artist Richard Long has also inspired your work, please give me an example of his influence or change.

I was super nerdy, but I was influenced by him before I started to try to go out and travel. I forced myself to go on a few trips, but I still like to choose not to go out more and more, and every time I am torn between going there and seeing it, or lying at home, turning on the big and small HD screens, I am just as happy and save a lot of trouble. In short, donkeys are super envious of me, and I love to drive all kinds of travel upkeepers when I draw.

3. Why do you want to focus on architectural themes?

I have OCD, it kills me if a line is not straight, and I can only relax after all the objects are put into an order. Architecture is a box for all these things, and it’s very comfortable to be divided into different categories.

4. You focus more on the presentation of the interior of the building or some of the dilapidated landscape associated with the building, why?

That is the messy and conflicting part of the personality, and it needs an outlet, the part of the personality that is cracked. I can’t actually live with other people because I can only work in very clean and tidy places. But fortunately I still have a family, and my daily compromises keep me barely within the bounds of normalcy. I know that indulging in cleanliness will push me to the extreme that an artist needs, but I would rather choose to be normal.

5. The structure, details and atmosphere of your pictures are all very strict and ingenious, how do you conceive your works? How do you arrange the structure of the picture and the layout of the objects?

Study. The Renaissance painters alone have inexhaustible elements, but the life span of human beings determines that learning from the previous ones is very limited. Painting is not the same, need to rely on many specific material characteristics and hand accumulation, the older you get, the more practice, the more visual and technical experience gained, will become more and more cattle, do not dare to think of those few geniuses, Masaccio, Basquiat … If they can live to be 70 or 80 years old, their paintings will reach which height. In fact, every work is a process of trial and error to find the part that can be preserved, each painting is different, even if it looks similar to outsiders. It’s quite risky, there’s quite a lot of luck involved in how good or bad each day’s work is, and if you’re not careful, you’ll break it. The good ones that are kept translate into your experience. Unless you’re intentionally trying to replicate mass production, each one is an adventure, big or small, even if you’re painting the same subject. As your experience base gets stronger, it will matter less and less what you paint.

6. What about considerations in terms of color, light, emotional expression, etc.?

When I was in school my tutor said I was a tonal painter, meaning that I was more sensitive to light and shadow in comparison. Years later I realized that I had, in fact, not been depicting the object itself, but had been depicting the layer of shadows between the object and the object, with the layer of shadows between the paint and the pigment. Color evolves in every age, and holding up to today’s age of screens, the material of oil painting has been very strained, and although it has been proven to preserve for a long, long time, it really doesn’t suit the eyes of the people of today, and is extremely slow. This is one of the reasons why I came to Germany, to have the opportunity to look for more materials.

7. How do you manage not to portray people directly, but yet be full of elements of the work?

It is that people are getting used to communicate with objects and unconsciously treat them as others. Today, the original most indispensable cleaning aunt in my studio has been replaced by three iRobots, and every time they pass by, my daughter and I subconsciously say hello to him.

When and for what reasons did you establish this style of creation (realistic figurative) at present?

This is how I created my works after graduating from college, and it has not changed since then.

9. Is there a clear sequence of development from the beginning to now? If yes, please talk about your stages or turning points, using your works as nodes. And what has been the constant in this?

This exhibition is an opportunity to discuss these questions. I think my constant is the pursuit of sharpness, just like a diamond, the more you cut it, the more it shines.

10. What are the sources of inspiration for your work? How does it translate into your work?

Pretty much anything I can touch, sometimes even a word, a setting, a taste, not just an image. It depends on how sensitive you are, not on the source. It’s too difficult to translate it into your work, you have to think hard every time, but your perception will push you to keep looking for the answer.

11. What do you care most about in your creation? What is the most important thing you want to express?

The most important thing is aesthetics. If it doesn’t look good, it’s not good, but it’s something you can’t get rid of, beauty is not a positive word in art. China is also a big country of painting, with a long history, an artist’s bones can easily have aesthetic requirements for visuals, and it comes with a weakness, even though it may actually be a great artist.

III. Life experience

1. What prompted you to take the path of art and enroll in the China Academy of Art?

When I was a child, I loved to draw, and it was no trouble to draw something for me. When I was a freshman in high school, I started to learn to draw, and I liked it so much that I couldn’t eat or drink, so I soon knew that I just wanted to go to the Academy of Fine Arts, so I dropped out of school and enrolled in the Academy’s secondary school.

2. You were exposed to traditional Chinese painting and calligraphy in middle school, but why did you finally choose the oil painting department?

It was a little misunderstanding in one of the interviews, I went to the attached middle school of the Academy of Fine Arts, and the main classes of the attached middle school were still drawing and coloring, following the masters of the European Renaissance. The oil painting department is most like the attached middle school students, who are childlike and have a well-rounded ability. The training in the Chinese Academy of Fine Arts is very harsh, the basic skills are quite solid, and you can imagine the fierce competition, so many people.

3. What was the Chinese art environment like at the time when you were a student at the China Academy of Art? Were you influenced in any way?

At that time, the art academy was the only platform through which one had to understand the world, the pride, the mystery. There was no channel for self-education except for the teachers’ teaching, unlike now. But at that time, the whole art environment in China was already very free, and there was only a time gap with the rest of the world. In the first and second year of middle school, we rode our bicycles to Hangtu to watch “inside movies”, and later on, these movies were shown every weekend in the classroom of the Academy of Fine Arts. Knock on the table to watch Prague Love, White Night Run, etc., etc. It’s just that the art ecology is relatively single. Unlike now, which is integrated into the global market, it is even fun that Chinese artists can sometimes make works of any style in an abstracted vacuum.

4. What are the biggest difficulties you have encountered during your years of art seeking? And what is the bottleneck of creation?

The biggest difficulty before was not really a difficulty compared to now. I haven’t encountered any creative bottlenecks, so I may not have a high starting point. But my mind is often blank, I don’t know what I am doing, and I can’t explain why I am doing this or that. The specific difficulty is that every time you have to start, it is really the most difficult stage. Oil painting is actually a medium with a high technical threshold, and the preparation work is tedious and elaborate. I have been in the art school for eleven years, and I know at most twenty percent of the techniques I have practiced so far. It may be time to add other materials.

Apart from the artists mentioned earlier, are there any people/events that have had a significant impact on your creation or life?

This year, two masters of the Renaissance gods, in Florence, have had a huge impact on me. Half of the reason I moved to Europe was so I could see them more often, but the epidemic and preparations for the exhibition dragged on until now, and I went there on the third day after this exhibition was shipped out. There is another important reason to rush there in such a minute, Masaccio’s painting is under repair, so you can walk up to the scaffolding and see all the details at close range, in a flat view, with perfect lighting for repair, without pulling a corner. Back then, Leonardo da Vinci also needed to crane his neck in Florence to study this work reverently by the faint light of the church. Another destination, the Angelico in St. Mark’s Monastery, was the first time I saw the original work, I had imagined it for many years and had mental expectations, but as soon as I climbed up to the second floor and faced the beginning of “The Birth of the Child”, just after walking through the small rooms on one side, I realized that my student days, my career, the whole thing was in vain, a blank. I knew nothing about how to paint a picture or how to make an exhibition.

6. What was the opportunity that made you choose to settle in Berlin, Germany? What is the art environment in Germany at the moment?

At the end of 2017, while preparing a group exhibition at the Gropius Gallery in Berlin, the current studio was favored. Before that it was a crazy period of real estate in China, I counted less and less, and I moved my studio five or six times, and I was getting farther and farther away from the city, and I couldn’t do anything if my children had to go to school, so I really wanted to have a permanent studio in the city. You know it’s hard to buy a house with a big warehouse or something like that in China. Anyway, now the studio is in the center of town, a few minutes walk to the supermarket, home, pick up and drop off the kids. No more need to have a car. The art industry was originally a parallel time, where not too many people cared, maybe after the epidemic and the war, people started to care about that and that was a problem. The German art environment is not only the market to support the artists, the artists who do not sell well or cannot sell can also survive by various applications, without having to work very hard.

IV. Current life situation

1. How is your current creative state? How do you divide the time between creation and rest every day?

By nature, I either work 24/7, except for sleeping and eating. Either I live my life 24/7, lie down every day, like to be alone, and am to blame for not being able to multi-task. But I am a secular person, I have a family, a child and a house, so I am the one who is divided, I can’t learn to manage my time, and I struggle every day. It’s not easy to paint oil paintings: It’s like opening a small restaurant, you have to wake up early every day to estimate the amount of food for the day, prepare fresh ingredients, heat up the pan, heat up the oil and hands, serve and fry the food, run the hall and collect the money, then you have to shabu-shabu the pan and wash the pot, clean up the guys and call it a night, and the next day it’s the same again and again, not even one step less. If you do not work every day to ensure the time, you can not open the painting are. For example, if you only have half a day free, you can’t use it to paint oil paintings, because of technical restrictions. This work, which requires concentrated time, is particularly unsuitable for the fragmentation of modern society and the change of social style.

2. Besides creating, what are the other ways to maintain your mood and interest?

It is particularly difficult to maintain your mood. To start painting, you have to press the pause button on everything that is not related, and be silent! It’s not easy, and it takes as short as six months or as long as one or two years, which is quite hard to bear. Staying up late and losing sleep, physical exhaustion are commonplace, and it’s a burn-out job, but fortunately we were raised to be hardworking, unlike European artists, who generally don’t exert themselves as hard and don’t have to work as hard.

3. What is the ultimate thing that you have been constantly pursuing for many years until now?

It seems that there is always something that is near and far from you. It may be like seeing an onion for the first time, peeling away layer by layer to find the pulp, but in fact every layer just discarded is.

What have you been working on lately, and do you have any new creative ideas? Do you have any future challenges?

There are many, many.