Public Opinion  166x246cm  Ink and wash, sewing and newspaper  2020

When the pandemic was severe, I stayed at home. World affairs were being relayed through the news and mobile phones. When the pandemic spread, in addition to the senses facing the outside world there requires more imagination to connect clues, which seems to have become an invisible but closer connection, and such connection is very personal. Everyone is accustomed to finding answers in reality, but the answers approved by ourselves seem to exist only in self-recognition and identification. Various groups of people have different views on the pandemic, just as everyone’s appearance is different with masks—the same answer does not seem to exist. At this time, I realized that what actually happened seemed to be covered by a certain illusory color, and the imagination had a specific concreteness. Everything is always between "almost" and "seems". In this way, within a specific time and space background, the existence and illusion, reality and imagination, are connected with the help of individual thinking and the reappearance of virtual pictures. You can hardly confirm the boundary between reality and illusion. It seems that you want to define it, but it is rather difficult to distinguish. 

Inhabiting   37.5x53cm  Ink and wash on newspaper  2020Anyway  37.5x53cm Ink and wash on paper  2020

Coherence  75x108cm  Ink dyeing and printing on newspaper  2020Revolving   53x76cm Ink and wash on newspaper 2020

Like when newspapers overlap with the pictures attached to them, the words and graphics are hard to distinguish. During the pandemic, the world is still familiar, but this familiarity is like meeting an acquaintance wearing a mask on the road, and it cannot be immediately recognized.

Human organs are so interesting. When one of them is shadowed, the body will stimulate the sensitivity of the other organs to link thinking and imagination. However, over time, will the acuity that people are initially excited by a certain event become dull, numb, and paralyzed? Will it go back to the closed loop of accustomed and inconsistent once again?

Clamour  107x151cm Ink dyeing and printing on newspaper 2020Group Talks  76x107cm  Ink dyeing and printing on newspaper   2020

End Point 37.5x53cm  Ink and wash on newspaper  2020

Under the pandemic, we get used to wearing masks. By doing so, the action of wearing a mask has become a symbol of our lifestyle, which has invisibly gathered into a symbolic continuous pattern.

Style  53x76cm  Ink and wash on newspaper  2020Sailing  37.5x53cm  Ink and wash on newspaper 2020

Staying at home allows me to understand the real meaning of the virtual sentence, "Let the mind plug the wings of imagination".

Qiang Yong

1969 Born in Shandong Province

1997-1999 Studied in the Department of Plastic of Musashino Art University (MAU) in Japan and majored in Crafts and Industry Design, with a master degree

Currently he works as Professor of Central Academy of Fine Arts, Dean of Art Design Institute at CAFA

Selected Exhibitions:

2019 Today's Action—The 4th Conference Exhibition, Gallery Saiensu, Iwate, Japan

2019 Sculpture Project Pingyao, Pingyao, Shanxi

2019 The Appearance of Pines and Cypresses—The Centenary of the Birth of the Central Academy of Fine Arts and the 80th Anniversary of the National Academy of Art in Yunnan, Yuanxiaocen Art Park, Kunming

2018 The 1st China Textile Art Exhibition, THE CHINA MILLENNIUM MONUMENT, Beijing

2018 Silk Story 2018 International Fashion Art Exhibition, Beijing Exhibition Center, Beijing

2017 Contemporary Dialogues between Fashion and Art, Zhuzhong Art Museum, Beijing

2017 Echo of Civilization, Imperial Ancestral Temple, Beijing

2017 Loom—The Contemporary Art Exhibition, Suzhou Jinji Lake Art Museum, Suzhou

Image and Text Courtesy of the Artist

Translated and Edited by Sue and Emily/CAFA ART INFO