The sensual desire and comfort:

Some keywords for Zhang Lin¡¯s latest art works

Sheng Wei

It was on a summer night of 2004, with stars in the sky, I became to know Zhang Lin, at that moment this young artist was being engaged in his art creation - a series of oil paintings concerning the cells, his interest in microworld and sharp consciousness is exactly his most outstanding characteristicses. Three more years passed, when I faced Zhang Lin's works again, I found the appearance of his works changed a lot, but when looking into the deep in details, those characteristics behind the canvases are still there¡£There are something very attractive to the audience in his new works, I summarize it here in a few keywords, to reveal the unique features and the new appearance of Zhang Lin¡¯s latest works.

Light
It can be that no"light" no art, it¡¯s at least two times that the "light" brought changes on art in art history: the literature renew and the impressionism. In Zhang Lin's paintings, he carried on to the light a kind of special presence, that in his works, there is always a bunch of faint but discernable light conceals behind the main figure, which is very similar to the appearance of the master piece (ecstasy of st.Teresa) by the Italian Baroque artist Bernini, however, the differentiations are very obvious, Bernini painted the light to show the God¡¯s existence and shining glory benefiting the humanworld, while in Zhang Lin¡¯s paintings, the light stay together with the person of a commonness. the self-performance of the common main figure meets a kind of relation with the existence of the light, this is exactly the approbation and the praise on an individual expressed by the artist Zhang Lin.

Shallow space
The dropping and splashing skill of creating paintings is in art history a big contribution by the american abstract performance artist Baroque, it¡¯s exactly not the thinking of the reasonableness but the free droppings and splashings that efficiently translated the artist¡¯s own emotions and cocepts on the canvases, and passed to the audience. In Zhang Lin's works, Zhang not only inheritted this skill, also turned it to the further and related it with space arrangement, firstly, these slightly disordered lines have already vividly transferred the artist¡¯s comments on the mood of the figures in his paintings, in he meanwhile all the lines come into a net in the front of the canvas which causes the cuts of the space, it¡¯s like a translucent curtain which parts the audiences¡¯ views in the art work¡¯s appearance, Here the artist constantly hints the audience by his arrangement of such a shallow space, to finally achieved a kind of sensitive caustious tension.

The background takes out to leave
The background is obvious to the importance of a work, the existence of the background can provide a lot of informations not only to the audience, and also contribute to the comprehension toward the work topic. But, in Zhang Lin's paintings, we can see, there¡¯s almost no background, probably this kind of parlance is not correct, in fact, we should say the artist expresses a kind of background that had the backing, in my eyes, exactly because the background takes out to leave, his paintings have more attraction, for the concrete background can not only directly guide, also can mislead the audience easily, So Zhang Lin used the method of taking the concrete background out to leave, to focus the audience¡¯s attention on the mood and emotion expression

The sensual desire and comfort
The detailed consideration in various forms above, I think it can be helpful for us to comprehend the artist Zhang¡¯s concept and the topic in his works. He transplants a series of private living scenes in a public space, and the great number of topics are related with"sensual desire", these appearances don¡¯t point at someone¡¯s real life ¨C probably this is the right intention that the artist takes the background out to leave and puts the space in cuts, by this way to search for a kind of extreme comfort on modern life, as what we see , the development of the modern society just constantly helps a kind of social system to rule people¡¯s daily life, under this system, procedured life style becomes the main current, no accident, no miracle. Therefore, I think, the purpose of the extreme expression in zhang¡¯s paintings, is to present in pulic the trues which are rarely and hard to be displayed, making people touched while it¡¯s stimulating people¡¯s sense of vision.

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