Wang Yongsheng has always said “you city fellows” when he talks with strangers, and he quite enjoys living distant to the city. He repeats the performance of everyday lives of ordinary people in Hotan district, it is not a strategic choice for him to choose a minority subject in his painting, empirically showcasing his life experiences, which is different from many painters that create with frontier themes.

Although born in a Han family in Feng Country in Xinjiang, Wang Yongsheng grew up in an Uighur family through his childhood. Therefore, his bones are imbued with Uighur blood, and he speaks Uighur language more fluently than Chinese, while his paintings exude feelings of fearlessness and passion. He has travelled alone to all the small isolated villages and tombs that are buried by sand in Hotan, Xinjiang. “Adventure” is more important than a painting career for him, the enthusiasm and dedication to nature does not originate in the psychology from which modern people seek adventure or escape from their urban lives, but it is originated from some inner characters and instinct. The bold and wanton nature of his life has been extended to the artistic creation, applying colors and brushstrokes that return a primitive and wild natural state, giving up a harmonious tone which is formed through training in sketching, using a large number of high purified saturated colors and thick brushstrokes to paint. Golden yellow background is in strong contrast with thick blue and black figures, the green faces have a taste of Fauvism. The reality is simplified to a visual relationship in his landscape painting, while realistic color perspective is digested, highly subjectively using color. Through the juxtaposition and contrast of color blocks as well as distribution of colored dots he builds up a graphic color space, and then the individual color blocks are connected by black, to balance the mess produced by color combinations so resulting in a visual stability. Use of a variety of saturated colors in the screen renders a harmonious high tune, while wholly constituting a pattern with a decorative taste. These thick brushstrokes contain a burst of energy which is derived from the inner disposition.

Theme is but the media to reveal a subjective expression, in the face of mountains and rivers, deserted rock patches, condensation of his emotional rough memories are naturally evoked, heartily vented and flowing. This land is his spiritual home, while the more one tries to reproduce the nature through the shape of realism, the more he looses himself in art. When he is close to the rules, he is distant to his nature. Thus, only by abandoning his deliberate pursuit of the exact shape, a rigorous composition and harmonious color, despite form, color, brushstroke, space freely growing with a theme, one will really get into nature. Themed expression retreats to a secondary position, some primitive factors of instinct are prominent in the form of exploration. Abandoning external realism, one will be close to an inner reality, rooted in the self return. The self is both on a spiritual and real life level while the personal memories and emotional experiences of the artist drive it backwards.

Wang Yongsheng’s paintings try to capture a thick idyllic atmosphere in southern Xinjiang as well as a touch of loss and sadness is revealed in the easy life. A Hotan man plays dulcimer in the cobblestone beach, a young woman sews clothes under a tree, a girl contemplates while in the chicken market, an empty desert highway, boys roll toys next to house walls … there’s neither a deliberate grand scene, nor expression of humanitarianism, but to find a lasting memory in the narration of everyday life. Wearing traditional Uygur clothing, they are strapped on this land, and always heavily laboring, singing and playing dulcimer in their spare time, with a Millet-like-fate taste. It seems that they are destined to live in this desolate and burning world which is seen as god like, they cannot change the poor land, they have to enjoy everything that it holds. The undeveloped Hotan is a pure land outside the bustling metropolis, but it also becomes the hustle and bustle day by day, impossible to refuse being swallowed by the modernisation process. Rather than a spectator he puts himself in it. The girls, old men, farmhouses, and Tarim rivers, which recur in the screens have been turned into symbols of life, Uighur people’s traditional collective activities including making a Nang(a kind of traditional Xinjiang pancake), Buzkashi(take a lamb), singing, Pi’er(皮爾)dance, etc., and even to showcase a special sense of ritual.

In contemporary society, drawing with a function to record and reflect society has been gradually weakened, and more artists make use of their unique artistic language to express individual experiences and emotions. Thus, that an artist chooses a technique and subject in a specific period depends on specific environment and mental status. Wang Yongsheng has currently resigned from his steady job of Hotan Mass Arts Office, becoming one of the “city people”. After coming to Beijing, his paintings have undergone significant changes, and screens begin to obviously showcase a surreal flavor, objects are as erratic as symbols on the nightmare-like background, use of color and overall visual effect is showing a strong metaphor. It’s obvious that it is caused by his changeable life. As a painting technique, Wang Yongsheng has been away from the stage that reproduces the objects in a realistic way, he began to explore his own artistic language, and his future artistic development is unknown. But it’s presumable that those memories of life including walking alone in the vast desert will continue to put a deserted and broad energy into his art.

It’s abstracted from vol. 11 of “Contemporary Art”.

About Yi Ying

Yi Ying is a well-known art historian and art critic, born in Zhijiang County in Hunan Province, graduated from Hunan Normal University, Department of Fine Arts in 1982, and Art History Department of the Central Academy of Fine Arts in 1985. He is currently the professor of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, and the director of CAFA Journal, the editorial director of “Art Studies”, the editor in chief of “World Art Magazine” and the doctoral tutor. Major works include: “School’s Twilight” (Hunan Fine Arts Publishing House), “Front Side” (Hunan Fine Arts Publishing House), “Ode to the mundane from the heroic world” (Chinese People’s University Press), “World Art Collection: 20th Century Western Art”(Chinese People’s University Press),”The Selected Works of the World Art” four volumes edition (Hebei Fine Arts Publishing House),” Selected Works of Contemporary Western Art Criticism ” two volumes edition (Hebei Fine Arts Publishing House), the main translation works” Panovsky and Base of Art History “(Hunan Fine Arts Publishing House),” Art and Civilization – Cultural History of European Art”(Oriental Publishing Center).

Translated by Chen Peihua and edited by Sue/CAFA ART INFO.