2014 Three Sets of Contemporary Painting

Three sets of contemporary painting

Zhou Chunya | Interpretation of serial works of “Taohuahongren” by Zhou Chunya

Pan Deng | Metaphor of“Animal”sex: - about Pan Deng’s Recent Paintings

Zeng Fanzhi | Abstraction of “intentional” and “unintentional”

Metaphor of“Animal”sex: - about Pan Deng’s Recent Paintings

Articla / Liu Shaojuan

After years in the doldrums, Pan Deng has his new studio, and a string of new works. His new works, with Neo-Expressionism characteristics, appear in separate images, which are exciting and stunning.

This batch of new works mainly present the individual, specific, dramatic and visual moment posture: from small flying insects such as flies to large animals such as dogs and leopards; From the leader of people Mao Zedong to he and his own family members (in his opinion, “people” are nothing but a part of animal farm in a broader sense), the expressionism’s direct technique is applied to the specific image expression, after the rapid daub, these specific images are corrected by psychological daub, coverage and distorted desire, and finally, they present the real soul and reality in the heart of Pan Deng. The selected image should also be from his observation and precipitation of the daily life, personal preferences, and the social memory of his generation and the site of his own life.

The image of these living things is basically in the gray background, and the amplified flies stay there alert and stationary to make their dirty and toxicity confront with you and stimulate your nerves. That is a question – it is not just for the viewers, but for Pan Deng himself is also showing the choice of his inner desire - the magnified, full of germs and annoying things have their own social metaphor. While the painter used the final unification of gray tone (it is the dissociated sonic colors which are the symbol of passion), and made the shocking reality he presented transform into a special image which only existed in past memory. It is also noticed that although the painting technique and image schema of the black and white color was affected by the western things, we can still feel that his vicissitudes of life of survival training for many years in his heart presented in the final scene and atmosphere are different from others, and the breath naturally reveals without deliberateness. This is the good quality of a painter, and is the precipitation of life consciousness that can’t be replaced in the picture.

Dogs and leopards series can more manifest the original tension of images, and the instinct of dog and the leopards’ howl more simply imply the contradiction between the intensive desire (physical and psychological) and the realistic dilemma in the painter’s heart under the corresponding brush daub and in the image of gray tone. In his opinion, the struggle with various survival desires of “people” in the contemporary social life is very similar with animals. In addition, in other paintings, he began to involve in some crack jokes for himself, which have some cynical implications. Establishing a kind of new and balanced relationship of inner desire between Pan Deng and the reality has become the past for the trend of realism, but this kind of mood appeared now is real and meaningful for Pan Deng’s psychological evolution. Like the latest painting, in the background of water waves, Pan Deng is enjoying the desire ad temptation of “water”and playing in them. In the foreground and background of pale blue, a feeling of emptiness and vicissitudes of life is actually being strengthened by the colors, while the main people are playing in the pool. The expressionism’s some physiological suppression, serious sense and playful expression and action with the cynical mood finally are unified under the expressionism’s serious coat, which is interesting and maybe coincides with his consistent unconscious direction in his inner heart...

As the undercurrent across Chinese contemporary art, expressionism has existed and developed hardly under the efforts of some artists from 1985 up to the present. From the aspect of the emotions of the times, before 1989, idealism, individualistic heroism, as well as young life will were strong supports for the art with spiritual direction of expressionism. After 1989, the form of language performance with direct and real expression of inner feelings was repressed by Cynic social emotion and new words of art and power. Thus, this form of artistic language performance fails to meet the current prevailing social emotion of enjoyment and dwarf personality, and then becomes the undercurrent in borderline state (deeper psychological depression has never been reduced). By this time, this feeling of art, more or less, has integrated with other forms of graphic arts or art of new media. The artists who have purely stuck to and developed this artistic form and may derive artistic language of expressionism in the new times are limited. However, we have to see increasingly severe social problems of all kinds in this modern world. Shortness of human nature and depraved desires are commonly seen in the present era of enjoyment. To go with the stream, or to keep deeper psychological depression, how about returning to an individual and becoming survival of the fittest as an artist? Or face the depraved society, tear the pustule with severe suppressed diseases, thus to liberate deep psychological depression, further to make the art of expressionism possible to create the language? All these will depend on personal cultivation, desire of thought and inner beliefs of contemporary artists. I believe that it is the same for Pan Deng who just started his new journey.

2007.10.13

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Pan Deng's works, Fierce Animal - The Look In the Eye, 120cmx150cm, Oil on Canvas, 2007