Me and You", Art Critique Article"
Liu Siyuan
BB Gallery
01
In Paris, Lu Hang often frequents the Louvre. Sometimes, he goes there just for a piece of art, observing it for two hours, three hours, or even half a day. As the observation continues and deepens, as described by Hesse in his depiction of reading, wonderful things happen:
"At first, they thought it was a beautiful children's garden, with tulip beds and golden ponds, but now this garden has become a park, a landscape, a part of the earth. This world, with its celestial ivory coast, is full of an enticing ecstasy and constantly refreshing petals. And what looked like a garden, a park, or a tropical jungle yesterday, today, and tomorrow, increasingly resembles a temple, with thousands of rooms and courtyards, the spiritual wealth of all nations and ages, all waiting to be awakened, forming a polyphonic choir."
The constantly layered and expansive enrichment makes the psychological feeling brought by this mode of observation, rather than visual, closer to the nature of hearing. Observing in listening transforms the psychological relationship between individuals and works from "me and it" to "me and you," which is a face-to-face, direct, and intimate relationship. It is a "me" encountering "you" with my entire existence, it is a kind of communication and symbiosis.
The philosopher Martin Buber stated in his most important work, "I and Thou," that knowing whether a person perceives the external world as "you" or as "it" is a fundamental question. He believes that "me and it" reflects an experiential world, while "me and you" shapes a relational world.
Currently, when we say we are facing a person, it also implies that we will face the information and news that this person receives every moment, every minute, every second from various social accounts, media, entertainment platforms, etc. Such a situation makes the real face-to-face encounter of one person with another person (whether in reality or psychologically) a rare and luxurious thing. You will feel the panic and uncertainty that the person in front may get up and leave at any moment, the temptation and threat of another time and space hover between the dialogists, leaving at any moment has gradually become an implicit understanding, everyone seems to be "living elsewhere."
Facing Lu Hang, he often asks a question after finishing his own statement, "So, what do you think?", "Do you also think so?", "What are your feelings?". When you get used to Lu Hang's way of communicating, you will understand that he is not a unidirectional transmitter who leans the right to speak towards himself, but a participatory co-constructor who brings everything of himself and tries to explore everything in others. He seems to be a person who is eternally sitting on the chair across.
Watching and listening, whatever the cost, to art, to others, and to the entire external world. Time shows a delay on Lu Hang. He seems to come from 20 or 30 years ago, having not experienced the rapid acceleration of time, thus giving people a long-lost sense of classical faith and enthusiasm.
Lu Hang regards his constantly evolving artist's life as the most important work, that is, his cognition, feeling, expression, and creation; and each specific work only bears the mark of different stages. If Lu Hang's experience and works are juxtaposed, it will be discovered that his process of confusion, reflection, collapse, and reconstruction by stages is an active participation one after another in the external world, in the expansion and deepening of the psychological perspective relationship of "me and you." "Man" and "human nature" have become the meta-propositions that Lu Hang and his works always question and explore.
02
In 1987, Lu Hang was born in Beijing. Regarding the influence of his family, he believes that his parents' permissive upbringing played a key role.
Since the beginning of college, when his peers led a simple life between school and home, he was suddenly "thrown" into a reality with a very rich grayscale - going to Beijing Railway Station to sketch, and following reporters to various regions of the country for surveys and interviews.
These two important experiences formed Lu Hang's understanding of the concept of "seeing" in art. He believes that sight includes not only the two meanings of "seeing" and "listening," but also requires seeing the hidden side of things.
From high school and for four years, Lu Hang went to the Beijing train station to sketch three to four days a week. It was a suggestion from his father and also a tradition among Chinese art students. There, he saw people of all shapes and faces.
A mother lost her wallet, with her household booklet and ID card, and cried at the entrance of the station holding her young child. She was disheveled and desperate, and when she cried to the extreme, a kind of resolute dignity emerged in her expression. The police gave her money, and she softly said, what's the use of this money?
A shy monk, at first, didn't want to be painted by a stranger. When he learned that Lu Hang was a high school student and the painting was for practicing his skills, and that he could go to the Academy of Fine Arts if he practiced well, the monk said, then paint.
A thief, because he often encountered Lu Hang, avoided him when he began: "I'll find the next one."
In pursuit, being chased with a group of homeless people, a phrase floated from behind: "You, dirty painter!"
Painting the peaceful sleep of a child in the noisy waiting room, he was moved to the point where he couldn't help but look again and again, and for the first time, he felt the greed of vision and the meaning of painting.
He followed reporters to sites such as AIDS-affected villages, the conversion of farmland into forests, mining accidents, etc.
Sitting in the luxurious car of a wealthy man, listening to his project to change the world, through the car window, he saw an old man hunched over pushing a small cart full of cardboard and papers to sell waste, passing by slowly.
In the drilling team, he encountered a blowout accident. The workers plugged the well leak cursing the quality of the stone powder. When he came up from the mine, his whole body and the stone powder merged into one color.
During an interview, their car nervously raced along the dangerous mountain road all day long. In the heat, he squatted under the tree with the reporters and ate the sweetest watermelon ever tasted...
These experiences subtly sparked Lu Hang's interest in this world and in people. When people succeed, he also feels that those ordinary people who have not been recorded in history sing their own songs of joy and sorrow. Death, blood, and tears, despair, cries, numbness, smiles, behind every face, there is an indescribable fate. People and the world form a deeply complex and contradictory feeling in Lu Hang's heart.
If one cannot see others, the world will present a smooth and blurred appearance. Once one touches upon the shocking moments of others' destinies, the texture and roughness of the world will emerge. As a teenager, painting made Lu Hang feel that he had drawn a line with the people around him, giving him a sense of identity that was his own. After seeing so much in the world, Lu Hang felt that he was no different from others, and he quietly erased this psychological boundary line. Fundamentally, he believes that he is one with everyone, and there is no difference between people in his heart. Living here and living there has no essential superiority. From the perspective of human history, times change, but people seem to live similar destinies over and over again.
This destined Lu Hang's creative path and direction. He is interested in everything, from the origin of people to their final departure, and is fascinated by the folds and depths of human nature. His vigorous curiosity and desire for exploration make him not only want to reach the summit but also to dive into the depths of the sea. His works have no hesitation or evasion in exploring human nature, and they exhaustively describe the dark color at the bottom of human nature. Among them, there is a kind of fiery bravery and audacity, as well as a broader sense of sadness and compassion.
This is Lu Hang's fundamental thought and response to "why do I paint?"
03
Lu Hang's creative output is quite significant, and behind every genre and style, there is a research system that concerns him. Under the support of this rigorous creative logic, his works, whether in the extension of the content of a single genre or in the ideological expansion across genres, form an internal logical connection and echo. The formation of this creative thinking is the most important thinking about artistic creation that Lu Hang received during his studies in France, that is, how to construct and how to deconstruct.
As a research-focused creator, behind every genre and style, Lu Hang will revolve around a central point, conduct in-depth research and extensive reading. His reading interests and scope are vast and deep, involving a large amount of literature, politics, religion, psychology, economics, sociology, anthropology, etc., which build a solid creative thinking of Lu Hang and lay the foundation for him to master various and rich genres.
Lu Hang's initial creative style was deeply influenced by George Baselitz and Markus Lüpertz, two German neo-expressionist artists. Baselitz's artistic style is characterized by the inversion of the subject and finger painting, with a rough and spontaneous quality that directly appeals to the viewer's intuition. Lüpertz is known for his versatile and strong visual impact. His works are filled with reflections on history and reality, notably his series "Arcadia" created over the last decade, which is filled with imagination about Humanity's past history and its distant future.
After apparently exhausting the possibilities of this series of explorations, especially with the outbreak of the global pandemic, geopolitical conflicts, and world wars, the questions Lu Hang had been pondering since his adolescence resurfaced: What is the significance of painting for this era? What can art bring to this world? Why do artists exist?
During this period, Lu Hang's creative style was inspired by Henri Matisse, a French fauvist painter, Francisco Goya, a Spanish artist, and Poussin, a French classical artist. Matisse's free image structure, vibrant colors, and themes imbued with a deep love for the world and people, as well as Goya's bold use of color, strong visual impact, bizarre and varied painting style, imagination, and direct confrontation with the coldness of reality, as well as Poussin's established paradigm of expression from classicism and their respective life experiences, gave Lu Hang a new understanding of the relationship between art and the world.
In 2022, Lu Hang, who had studied and lived in France for ten years, was invited to return to China as a tutor of the International Art Workshop at his alma mater, the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute. It was during the epidemic prevention and control period, and the last class was temporarily changed to an online course. That day, in addition to the more than ten workshop students mentored by Lu Hang, there were over fifty additional online auditors.
At the end
of the class, Lu Hang said, "Let's all turn on our cameras, I want to see you on this last day." When the cameras were turned on, he saw three or four heads behind the camera, and the entire dormitory was crowded. This situation deeply touched Lu Hang, and he finally said "goodbye" to each unknown face behind the cameras.
Among the many experiences of Lu Hang, this detail is like a metaphorical act: taking a glimpse at what is behind, is it a specific person, or the truth of the world, or the essence of things?
During this year's workshop class, facing the students' works, Lu Hang was once moved and saddened to the point of having to take a brief pause to calm his emotions. He found that some experiences have an almost irreversible impact on people. Under the generally strong, oppressive, confronting, sad, and evasive emotional works, Lu Hang said to his students, "I would rather you never have to endure this, you can do without this burden, just represent a light and shadow, a color variation, a harmless fragment of ordinary life."
These moments that touched Lu Hang, and his past experiences, grant him a strong empathy. He had been treated sincerely, dignifiedly, and fairly by his teacher, and he faced his students in the same way.
In Lu Hang's overall artistic and emotional reflection, he underwent a major change, shifting from "disenchantment" to "re-enchantment" of human nature. Years of living abroad and traveling experiences around the world have broadened his vision and feelings. His works have also evolved, moving from the usual series of heavy oil paintings to the exploration of varied styles such as light collage and watercolor, discreetly injecting a trace of reconciliation, gentleness, and warmth into the usually cold and sharp emotions. Everything seems to enter him more deeply, and everything does not stay where it has always ended.
For Lu Hang, the best day is every ordinary day when he has "spent the whole day painting." When he was traveling for professional reasons and had to leave his studio for almost a month, he posted a message on WeChat Moments:
"I remember, when I was a child, playing with my friends in the apartment complex. It was dark, and under the blue light of the sky, I gradually saw the soft tungsten lights of each family turn on and escape through the windows onto the street. At that moment, I suddenly realized that I had played for too long and that I had to go home.
I really want to return to the studio as soon as possible, there are so many paintings, still waiting for me to paint them."
An image followed these words: A golden wheat field stretches from the front to the distant. There is a barely visible village on the horizon. Above the village, a vast and distant sky is covered with clouds.
Like a metaphorical call to painting for Lu Hang.
Ces expériences ont subtilement suscité l'intérêt de Lu Hang pour ce monde et pour les gens. Lorsque les gens réussissent, il ressent aussi que ces gens ordinaires qui n'ont pas été enregistrés dans l'histoire chantent aussi leurs propres chansons de joie et de tristesse. La mort, le sang et les larmes, le désespoir, les pleurs, l'engourdissement, les sourires, derrière chaque visage, il y a un destin indescriptible. Les gens et le monde forment un sentiment profondément complexe et contradictoire dans le cœur de Lu Hang.
Si on ne peut pas voir les autres, le monde présentera une apparence lisse et floue. Une fois que l'on touche aux moments choquants du destin des autres, la texture et la rugosité du monde émergeront. En tant qu'adolescent, la peinture a fait sentir à Lu Hang qu'il avait établi une ligne de démarcation avec les gens autour de lui, lui donnant un sentiment d'identité qui lui était propre. Après avoir vu autant de choses dans le monde, Lu Hang a senti qu'il n'était pas différent des autres, et il a effacé silencieusement cette ligne de démarcation psychologique. Fondamentalement, il croit qu'il est un avec tout le monde, et il n'y a pas de différence entre les gens dans son cœur. Vivre ici et vivre là-bas n'a pas de supériorité essentielle. Du point de vue de l'histoire humaine, les temps changent, mais les gens semblent vivre des destins similaires encore et encore.
Cela a destiné la voie créative et la direction de Lu Hang. Il s'intéresse à tout, de l'origine des gens à leur départ final, et est fasciné par les plis et les profondeurs de la nature humaine. Sa curiosité vigoureuse et son désir d'exploration font qu'il veut non seulement atteindre le sommet, mais aussi plonger dans les profondeurs de la mer. Ses œuvres n'ont aucune hésitation ni évasion dans l'exploration de la nature humaine, et elles décrivent de manière exhaustive la couleur sombre du fond de la nature humaine. Parmi elles, il y a une sorte de bravoure ardente et d'audace, ainsi qu'un sentiment plus large de tristesse et de compassion.
C'est la pensée fondamentale de Lu Hang et la réponse à "pourquoi je peins ?".
03
La production créative de Lu Hang est assez importante, et derrière chaque genre et style, il y a un système de recherche qui le concerne. Sous le soutien de cette logique créative rigoureuse, ses œuvres, que ce soit dans l'extension du contenu d'un seul genre ou dans l'expansion idéologique à travers les genres, forment une connexion logique interne et un écho. La formation de cette pensée créative est la formation de la pensée la plus importante sur la création artistique que Lu Hang a reçue pendant ses études en France, c'est-à-dire comment construire et comment déconstruire.
En tant que créateur axé sur la recherche, derrière chaque genre et style, Lu Hang tournera autour d'un point central, effectuera des recherches approfondies et une lecture étendue. Ses intérêts de lecture et sa portée sont vastes et profonds, impliquant une grande quantité de littérature, de politique, de religion, de psychologie, d'économie, de sociologie, d'anthropologie, etc., qui construisent une pensée créative solide de Lu Hang et posent les bases pour qu'il maîtrise des genres divers et riches.
Le style créatif initial de Lu Hang a été profondément influencé par George Baselitz et Markus Lüpertz, deux artistes néo-expressionnistes allemands. Le style artistique de Baselitz se caractérise par l'inversion du sujet et la peinture avec les doigts, avec une qualité rugueuse et spontanée qui attire directement l'intuition du spectateur. Lüpertz est connu pour son impact visuel polyvalent et fort. Ses œuvres sont remplies de réflexions sur l'Histoire et la réalité, notamment sa série "Arcadia" créée au cours de la dernière décennie, qui est remplie d'imagination sur l'histoire passée de l'Humanité et son avenir lointain.
Cette approche artistique profondément philosophique a eu une influence majeure sur Lu Hang, conférant à ses œuvres une posture subjective et une forte personnalité, révélant à la fois les aspects lumineux et les recoins sombres de la nature humaine. En examinant les thèmes et la trajectoire de sa création, on peut observer un processus complet de réflexion et de pratique autour de l'exploration de la condition humaine. Ce processus se résume principalement à deux grandes tendances : la "désenchantement" de l'humanité et le "réenchantement" de l'humanité.
Les séries d'œuvres telles que *Pavlov et l'enfant*, *Gymnastique*, *Le bol, la cuillère, le pain et le toupie*, *Le roi fou et le chien fou*, *Le vieil homme des montagnes*, *Fantôme*, *Chauve-souris*, *Deuxième corps vivant*, etc., révèlent le parcours de l'homme, de la naissance à l'attribution de ses attributs sociaux, en passant par l'aliénation, la mort et l'imaginaire autour de la possibilité de renaissance. Ces œuvres, d'une acuité froide et chirurgicale, mettent en lumière l'existence de l'homme en tant qu'être biologique, confronté à des changements et à des processus d'aliénation sous l'effet combiné de la société, de la culture, de l'histoire et de l'environnement. Ces créations, qui portent en elles une profonde vision critique, possèdent également des significations philosophiques et sociologiques de grande envergure.
Après avoir exploré en profondeur ces thèmes, et notamment avec l'éclatement de la pandémie mondiale de Covid-19 et les tensions géopolitiques et les guerres qui ont suivi, une question qui hantait Lu Hang depuis son adolescence resurgit : quelle est la signification de la peinture dans ce monde actuel ? Qu'est-ce que l'art peut réellement apporter à ce monde ? Pourquoi l'artiste existe-t-il ?
Durant cette période, le style de création de Lu Hang s'est nourri des influences des peintres fauvistes français comme Henri Matisse, de l'artiste espagnol Francisco Goya, et du peintre classique français Nicolas Poussin. La structure libre et la palette de couleurs vives de Matisse, son amour profond pour le monde et pour l'humanité, ainsi que l'audace de Goya dans l'utilisation de la couleur, son impact visuel intense et ses changements stylistiques étranges et imprévisibles, ont influencé Lu Hang dans sa compréhension de l'art et de ses rapports au monde. Poussin, avec son expression classique et son expérience de vie, lui a également donné de nouvelles perspectives sur l'art et sa place dans le monde.
En 2022, après dix ans d'études et de résidence en France, Lu Hang a été invité à revenir en Chine comme mentor pour un atelier d'art international organisé par son alma mater, l'Académie des Beaux-Arts du Sichuan. C'était pendant la période de contrôle de la pandémie, et le dernier cours a dû être donné en ligne. À la fin de la session, Lu Hang a demandé à tous les participants d'allumer leurs vidéos pour qu'il puisse voir les visages des étudiants. Lorsqu'il a vu des têtes se regrouper derrière chaque caméra, parfois des groupes entiers dans les dortoirs, cela l'a profondément touché. À ce moment-là, il a pris un instant pour dire "au revoir" à chaque visage inconnu derrière l'écran.
Dans les nombreuses expériences de Lu Hang, cet instant a été presque une métaphore : regarder ce qu'il y a derrière l'écran, ce sont des personnes concrètes, la vérité du monde, ou l'essence des choses ?
Lors d'un atelier plus récent, alors qu'il évaluait les œuvres des étudiants, Lu Hang a été profondément ému, et a même dû faire une pause pour apaiser ses émotions. Il a constaté que certaines expériences laissent une marque presque irréversible sur les individus. En voyant des œuvres chargées de sentiments d'oppression, de lutte, de tristesse et d'évasion, Lu Hang a conseillé à ses étudiants : "Je préférerais que vous ne deviez jamais endurer cela. Vous pouvez ne pas porter de lourdes charges, et simplement dépeindre un fragment de lumière et d'ombre, une variation de couleurs, ou un petit moment anodin de la vie."
Ces moments poignants ont résonné en lui avec ses propres expériences passées, lorsqu'il avait été traité avec sincérité, dignité et égalité par ses enseignants. Il a souhaité offrir à ses étudiants la même approche bienveillante.
Dans son parcours artistique global, Lu Hang a connu un changement majeur dans sa compréhension de la nature humaine, passant du "désenchantement" à un "réenchantement" de celle-ci. Ses nombreuses années à l'étranger et ses expériences à travers le monde ont élargi ses horizons et ses perceptions. Son style de création a évolué, passant des séries lourdes de grandes peintures à l'huile vers des explorations plus légères de collages et d'aquarelles. Dans ce processus, il a injecté subtilement, dans son univers initialement froid et acéré, une touche de réconciliation, de douceur et de curiosité. Tout semble s'immerger plus profondément en lui, tout en ne restant jamais figé à l'endroit où cela semblait autrefois s'arrêter.
Pour Lu Hang, le plus beau jour est celui où il peut dire : "Aujourd'hui, j'ai passé toute la journée à peindre." Un jour, alors qu'il devait quitter son atelier pour un voyage d'affaires d'un mois, il a partagé un message sur les réseaux sociaux :
"Je me souviens, quand j'étais petit, je jouais avec des amis entre les immeubles. Le jour tombait lentement, et sous la lumière bleu-violacé du ciel, je voyais peu à peu les petites lumières des ampoules à fil de tungstène s’allumer dans les maisons et se projeter à travers les fenêtres jusque dans la rue. À ce moment-là, je me rendais soudainement compte que j’étais resté dehors trop longtemps et qu'il était temps de rentrer à la maison.
Je suis pressé de retourner à l'atelier, il y a encore tant de peintures qui m'attendent."
La scène qu'il décrit est celle-ci : un champ de blé doré qui s'étend devant lui, au loin un village qui émerge à l'horizon, et au-dessus, un ciel vaste et lointain, couvert de nuages.
Cela pourrait être une métaphore de l'appel que représente pour Lu Hang la peinture, un retour toujours nécessaire à son art, un retour à ce qui le pousse à créer et à être en constante relation avec sa pratique.