Wang ming-an
It seems that there is no information which could be caught, or there is no certainty which could be seized in Li-lei’s scene. Li-lei’s works neither lead us to any specific objects, nor drew us into the social and historical direction. In this term, Li-lei’s works were not the reproduction of the outside life (no matter the bygone life or the present life), but the outpouring channel for emotion. The art here is not the seizure of the outside world, but the inner journey of the artist, the journey of life. More specifically, it’s the journey of the artist’s life in the inner painting. Li-lei expressed the true life into the invented painting space. The painting space is no longer the visual space which is full with lines, colors and shapes, but a space where the life goes through, lingers, wanders, and consumes. Thereafter, painting became another survival channel for life in the invented world. Under normal conditions, this kind of life is the stranger in the reality, and the stranger for the real life. This kind of life goes against the real life, and it will find itself in a tight corner and meet with difficulty in the real life. All his desire, passion, will and the power of life meet with obstacles which are immaterial, invisible and have no trace. In this meaning, the art is the way to deal with these obstacles, is the way to fulfill life’s experience. The art provides life with another space to escape from the real life. In this space, life can be treated soundly. Therefore, the art becomes the health cause which can treat various illnesses. It’s a way to overcome various difficulties, to remove various obstacles in life, to clean up all lusts, to persuade internal obstacles involuntarily. Just like weep to divert from sorrow, cry to abreact oppression, painting dredge is full of different semantic meaning as more as possible although it has no any special semantic meaning. Stammering, shouting, chattering, sobbing, angering, all these ways are the means of his abreaction. By these ways, he overcame the life obstacles. He persuaded himself by the means of painting--no matter the stammering painting or the crying painting. The journey can go ahead smoothly only in the space of painting. The process of Li-lei’s painting is the process of the self-surpass.
How could Li-lei came to realize his self-surpass? How many practical modes for painting as the technique of self-surpass are there?
In the earlier period, Li-lei adopted the techniques of connection and creating—connection himself with the painting subjects, creating himself into the painting subjects. The techniques of connection and creating differed from the means used in fables. In fables, the author projects his own thoughts and feelings into the subjects, looked the subjects as the alternate metaphor of his own, kept an immaterial metaphor linkage between the own and the subjects. In this linkage, the own didn’t appear visibly in the subjects, but we can find out the traces of the own. On the contrary, in the technique of connection, the own and the subjects appeared simultaneously in the same plane, and were the assembling element mutually. The own and the subjects produced each other and linked each other, even evolved mutually. Among Li-lei’s early works on Birds series, the bird was not entirely the projection of his own. The free and sun-red bird was not simply the embodiment of Li-lei, and Li-lei didn’t project his own passion and impulsion on the bird. In short, the bird didn’t be compared to his own (of course, at that time, he was not a bird, at most just a cageling). But he did want to be a bird, so he linked himself with the bird and assembled himself. He put on the bird wings and dreamed of flying. At the same time, he made up himself as a bird. So we could see one bird/one man is trying to spread its wings to fly/run. The other bird/man which didn’t fly connected each other by the means of circular arc line. With the same as those presented in Li-lei’s another “Hell Change” series (as well as the works in the mid-1990’s, such as “Intertwist”, “Moonlight in the lotus pool”, etc.), the strong desire to break away a rigid space and run away by the means of exaggeration, distortion, circumrotation, body twist by the circumrotation, and all the circular arc lines which tried to break loose but be bound together tightly presented the meaning of self-laceration, the meaning of the force tremble to try to remove the repressive stone. Li-lei’s early works were the record for the mutual production and the mutual evolution between man and bird. What inside the scene of these works was the assembly of man and bird, what outside the scene was the assembly of the artist and his works. It’s the trail of continuous changing: the artist turns into the personality of his works, the personality of the works turns into the bird, the bird turns into the artist…… an endless circle of changing. The desires for flying and breaking away stimulated this changing and producing, and they are the impetus for the changing.
The second technique of the Li-lei’s self-surpass is the way of emptying his heart. It’s perhaps very difficult for him to fly or escape at this time, so he gave up this idea and found out another way to break away the fetters of reality and get rid of the collision with the real life without space flying or space escaping. In this technique, the body was not be twisted by the thriving passion. Contrary to his early works completely, his “The Dhyana Flower” series didn’t express his body, but his inner heart. Li-lei tried to empty himself, tried to “break away the old ideas”, tried to cleanse his passion. After the set of the works around 2000, he rejected the indignation, phrenitis, avulsion and distortion contained in his early works, he emptied his thriving passion completely. So his works became peaceful, simply and gentle. The scene of these paintings was not squeezed by the force of anger, and there were no coarse bumps or ditches in the scene. The scene was smooth, graceful and peaceful, as well as full of various simple and elegant, pure and relaxed colors: brown, cream color, coffee, sky-blue, light white, even achromatic color, etc. all these color interacted, and as a result, all the burdens and all the depressions were disappeared, the sense of extrication were sprung up from the scene. Besides the simple and peaceful colors, there were all kinds of symbols in the scene. With these symbols sprinkled in the scene, the vacant of the scene became more notable. At the same time, these symbols didn’t suggest somewhat meaning, on the contrary, these symbols intensified the no meaning of the works. The Dhyana Flower series not only eliminated the passion, but also rejected various meaning burdens. The works emptied all the meanings. What did the works want to say? What did the works want to present? There were no muttering, no stammering. They were saying nothing. When saying nothing, it was saying extrication; when saying extrication, it was saying childhood; when saying childhood, it was saying playing; when saying playing, it was saying joyance. The marks in the scene which were just like the childish scrawl were the joyful trace out from the playing. They were not only the dancing for the artist’s hand, but also the graceful dancing for the relaxed heart. It’s the heart dancing that confirmed the health.
Then, we come to see the third technique for Li-lei’s self-surpass very soon. In this technique, health was no longer presented by the means of vacancy and nothing expressed in the Dhyana Flower series, no longer presented by using the negative forms (negating passion, negating meaning, negating manhood and negating strength). Health was presented by using the positive forms: Li-lei made use of the strength, the passion and the will. However, all these positive forms were not suffocated and were not rejected. Therefore, the strength and the passion didn’t break out by the means of screaming. It’s the natural outpouring of the healthy body rather than the penetration and the demolition. The passion here was very fluid, very self-confident, as well as stable (there were no curve, no flaw, no mess in the scene). In Li-lei’s humanistic and landscape painting series, the passion was so fluid that it looked as the neutralization of the passion itself, even there was only the form of the passion. In this series, the thickness of color was intensified, and partial contrast hue appeared here and there in the dominant hue of the scene. It seemed that a kind of music jumped rhythmically in the scene. At the same time, completely contrary to the skill used in the Dhyana Flower series, in the humanistic painting series and landscape painting series, there was no clearance in the whole scene. The scene was full and had no center, no focal point. Everything, no matter inside the scene or outside the scene was absorbed by the painting. It’s the positive absorption, and it’s the legislation of passion itself, it’s the enrichment and the operation of force, it’s the force’s self-consumption in the scene after accumulation and fullness, it’s the movement of the active force. In this meaning, painting became the trace for the artist himself, not the trace of passive twist force, but the trace of active fluid force. It’s more important that Li-lei presented the active force and the passion to the mountain, the water as well as the nature. Force and passion returned into the natural condition from the turbulence of the social life, which means the life full of force returns into the natural condition.
At last, it’s natural for Li-lei to return into the nature—not only the mountains and waters in nature, but also the natural condition for human being. The natural condition was actually the free condition. The free condition surpassed affirmation and negation. If the Dhyana Flower series expressed the joyance of freedom by the means of self-negation, humanistic painting series and landscape painting series expressed the joyance of freedom by the means of self-affirmation, in the natural condition, freedom and the joyance of freedom were independent of the affirmation and negation. No longer fastened on the scene itself, even no longer fastened on the painting form, Li-lei’s recent works entirely followed the natural self-sense, followed the self-feeling for the moment of painting. The forms of the scene (composition, color and ration) were no longer important. It’s the self-feeling at the moment of the painting that was important. This kind of creation feeling was completely spontaneous, and it was natural and free. It’s neither the active negation nor the active affirmation. It’s this creation feeling that determined the form of the works. In this meaning, works was the artwork, and the material form of the creative power, as well as the record of the creative power. Just in the creative power, in the artist’s feeling, the freedom for the creative power engulfed everything, including the painting meaning, the affirmation and the negation, impetuosity and peace, spirit and desire, technique and skill. In this meaning, we can conclude that by hiding its materiality and its form, painting becomes the feeling channel, the survival channel for an artist