In terms of visual narration and conceptual expression, Li Jikai’s paintings possess the characteristics of a kind of “New Painting.” They integrate contemporary visual experience (such as the borrowing of cartoon-like styles), emphasize the narrative quality of everyday images as symbols (such as the poetic transformation of common objects), and strengthen the painterly expression of images (such as calligraphic gestures). He breaks through the barriers of image replication, merging imagery with the consciousness of the self and the temperament of the “contemplative subject.” At the same time, Li continues and develops the early 1990s “New Generation” tradition of focusing on self-experience, while endowing it with a micro sociological cultural insight. Thus, the “self-meditation” in Li’s works does not belong to him alone - it also represents a collective or generational psychological symptom shared by contemporary youth.
By He Guiyan
