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The solo exhibition titled as "No Way" of Jiang Huajun will be presented at PIFO New Art Gallery on Aug. 15, 2010 following up Haizhou Wu's Art 2010 "the Public Unknown".

Jiang Huajun's paintings might be regarded as an "extraordinary" to the observation of contemporary art practice, which has no relation to the body language form and no idea about strategic namby-pamby expressed by painting conception, but using a modern artist's internalized feelings to show his own realization and thoughtfulness of surroundings on canvas truthfully and construct a whole individualized menu depending on his intuition and instinct.

He shows the spiritual predicament, the heart of resistance, encountered in the existed survival world out visually. Although it shows his strong personal statement, let the viewers feel a kind of palpitation and disconsolation which seems straight to their heart sedulously on visual.

PIFO persists in exploring the new probability of narration and excavating elements of contemporary art paintings. From Xiong Yu's exhibition of "Angel in City" to Wu Haizhou's "the Public Unknown", PIFO consciously gets in touch with the artistic intuition and the narrative sensibility of painting which are neglected by contemporary art swim. By right of his own brushwork with strong personal emotions, Jiang Huajun is determined to unveil the resistant volition emerged in his individual life.

Jiang Huajun was born in Hunan Province, now he is living in Beijing. As young artists with 10 years experiences of accumulation, his solo exhibition "No Way" shows his adherence to painting language in the new context and records his emotion and reflection of the encountered world as an individual existence.

Keep Watching through Death - About Jiang Huajun's Art Works

By Feng Boyi

Jiang Huajun's works is a little bit anachronistic with the popular so-called contemporary art nowadays. Because his works went without fashionable, superficial and stimulative effect formed by desired creation, without full-spread overruns of post-colonial words and even without connivance and catering for western aesthetic sentiment. His creations much more embody the perplexity and desirability of non-utilitarian survival in the cockles of his heart, which means his creation is a way in allusion to the survival pressure and defect in reality.

In other words, he just chooses this way to express his feelings and experiences towards world, because he has known some issues which deserves and must be revealed, such as the unprecedented swell of substance desire, the lose of humanity spirit and the anomie of different kinds of values led by social conversion, especially his contradiction and loneliness among these as well as the non-habitual anxiety about spirit drift. However, his creations show different kinds of tribulations in this spiritual perplexed era, meanwhile, express his misery of spiritual relics as well as the quest and salvage of new survival state of human kind.

Jiang Huajun's works use an immediacy of figurative realism to make inquires on existent situations of human spirit, feel the suffering of life desire encountered in the social horizon. From his work "Drifting•Floating" painted in the year of 2007 and 2008, we can see a boy, who is delineated so sensitive, weak and contains a non-understanding loneliness, stares at this world quietly without love and warmth when he is facing the industrialized large-scale machinery devices, or sitting at the concrete space, or facing stream and cloud, or drifting in the water.

Actually, if we saw it from the aspect of psychology, we could see this boy is not only the window who observed the world by artist, but also his real portrayal life. That also reflects his mourn for tribulations when he was young. Because his ability to afford this suffering and the way through the survival appearance in some degree cater for thinking and penalty spirit, also is a kind of unwilling struggle which artist faces the absurd reality.

Camus said: "Absurd people see a burning and cold world indistinctly upon that. In this world, not everything is possible, but fixed. When you go over it, you would find collapse and nihility. Absurd people can decide to live in that kind of world, and then gain his own power and obtain the denial towards hope as well as the persistent evidence of life without consolation." (See "Myth of Sisyphus", P74, Beijing, Sanlian Bookstore, 1987)

Jiang Huajun shows secular society's indifference to life itself by the right of this and emphasizes on "facing" as well as the potential meaning to each life. Therefore, the boy is not only a view point, but also an artistic figure to disclose the absurdity of existence. When he opens the suffering scene in the reality, his own suffering also shows people's solicitude. For aught I know, he knows people is a social being, also an existence of life, the imbroglio between groups and individuals is a huge perplexity in life.

He also knows the struggle between intellect and sensibility is a tragedy difficult to attemper forever. But his courage exists in: he faces this misfortune directly and never goes away and avoid from the hardships and tribulations of human natures. Conversely, he uses the stance of traditional human spirit to survey and feel the hardships and the grave and hopeless of tribulations. He doesn't attempt to search for the compensation of aphasia in the reality, but to exhibit the survival status of human beings in the field of deconstruction of reality and then corroborate the attention and cognizance of the creative body to self-existence.

In this essential contemplation to life existence, first of all, he targets the taste goal at the individual existence. This common and humble life that produces happiness and tribulation continuously is the proof of self-existence. Jiang Huajun's endless causalgia towards existent reality soaks in numbness, vulgarity and ignorance. Meanwhile, he also uses intuitionistic scene to show a bitter life and the power of intrinsic life symbolically.

Jiang Huajun makes efforts on showing the sick lives as a group by combined figures of animals, in comparison to all kinds of suffering interpreted by instinctive desire. Animals often accompanied with poor living environments, looking at everything in reality with numb eyes, standing or walking aimlessly on the scene set by Jiang Huajun. The living way with diluted human spiritual dimension and human dignity decomposes the value of civilization, strengthening the animality of human to a new level in anthropomorphic way. In other words, they expand the human desire for material. It is a living pursuit in representation, but abandoning heart and ignoring people's spiritual solicitude, which provides a broad mental space for the performance of human desire without any shelter. Jiang Huajun could face this bitter realities of life, just because he attempts "to self decode to this encountered world and era through the keyhole of ‘personal existence'" (see the catalogue of "the Fourth A+A" on page 102, published by PIFO New Art Gallery).

It is an oppugnation of psychopathic personality injected by modern society, not only representing the physical defects, but also a kind of monstrosity in spirit. Such as the animal images, props and scenery which spy on the reality as well as the sprat with suspicion sitting on the ruins in "Century Park" (2009); grinning mouth of big crocodile in "Afternoon" (2008)……These indicate, in the context depth, artist's abomination to the vulgar and sterile living prospect. They dissipate people's creativity and volition and deplete the courage of struggle as well as making the healthy personality become beggarly and pale.

Obviously, it is not Jiang Huajun's trick to stimulate people's visual, but an extrasensory exploration of sick life. Here, despite the image emphasizes its external shape, but the intrinsic disease of character and living absurdity are self-evident. The reason why he focuses on creating pathological characters and sometimes even deliberately eliminates moderation and kindness which should be existed in reality, only evil and ugliness are left in the works is not from a despair mood actually. Although some expressions of atmosphere are dark and confused, and characters are also filled with a physical impulse, but they ultimately reflect the deep calls and ultimate concern of the artist to the spiritual noumena.

Perhaps his intension is to remind people what issue is to maintain the value of human existence, and what issue is insignificant through exposure of inverse. We often say that pioneer is not just on the behalf of avant-courier of artistic noumenon, but emphasis more on standing in front of the times in spirit. Pioneer is not artistic, but in the position of spirit. They nominate existence with courage in the conflict of existence. Their works reflect artist's solicitude to human living prospect in facing misery and misfortune directly, and attempt to get close to the human essence. Jiang Huajun clings to depict living suffering with multi-dimensional presentations of psychopathic personality in aesthetical ideal deep in the art. This precisely reflects his vanward quality and essential artistic conscience as well as the artist's ethics and watch.(Editor's admin)