By Wang Min’an
Amid water, rectangular tables, pyramidal dust heap, towering pillars, or piled up toy bricks, a small figure emerges from the background, a background which is fully painted, and yet, nothing but void. Here is our first glimpse of Li Jikai’s painting. Apparently, this small figure is the Centrum. However, which is odd to me, he seems to acquire the dominant position due to his smallness. No matter how big how tall how splendid the environment he is situated in, be it his toys, his supports and his background, nevertheless, strangely enough, none of these could suppress this outstanding small figure, nor silence him nor diminish him. This small figure somehow manages to always fight his way to the importance, even though he, with ambiguous face, often stands in the corner, solitarily and emotionlessly. Here, the small figure doesn’t mean to be the ‘powerless grass-root’ from the perspective of social status, but rather based on the size of his body, the whole area that his body takes over in the entire painting, and of course, his young age. This is the two nature of the small figure in Li Jikai’s work.
Li Jikai is apparently fascinated by the absolute visually minimum quantum of the figure. The small area the body may take doesn’t mean to compare with an adult, but rather to the space of bulky background inside the painting. To regard a person from his size and the area his body may take, which is here undoubtedly Li Jikai’s way of observing people, it tumbles down the man depicted in a world that is also defined by the dimension of depth. Through depth, which is mythicized by all humanists, there is always an internal world of a person with his/her hidden secretes to be discovered. This has been defined as spirit (or its many other replacement) since Plato. This is not what Li Jikai is interested in. He doesn’t regard inner depth as human dimension, but rather the area of surface of human body. Here, a stream of numbers or geometric forms measures man. He is defined by his absolute area that he can take. This man is not structured by the tension from depth nor an inner world being vertically penetrated desperately. Here, the face of each of the small figures covers the inner world, those glassy-eyed face and petrified vapid body. Some of the images are so indistinctive, which become solely symbols signifying mankind or a vague ideograph of mankind. Without background or history, the inwardness of these figures evaporates. Thus, man becomes a man without free will, without flow of force. Man becomes no-man, becomes an object, or a still life. He is among the decoration in the painting, as if no differences with any other objects in his background. Li Jikai erases entire passion, desire, and wildness, even curiosity away from these small figures.
Yes, Li Jikai turns a vivid manhood into petrified still life. He quantifies man and measures man in cubic. He materializes man and makes him simply an object, an object among the monotonic background. Sometimes, there is a man with horns, like animal. As decorative still life, he is small but indispensable. He is not an allegoric still-life, but a simple still-life juxtaposed with toilet, wooden pillars, tables, dust heaps, water, aircrafts, animals, and, inexplicable curves even. Here, the man does not surpass any other object, likewise, these objects are not merely his background either. They, all of them, weave a tranquil yet surrealistic pattern together. Like man and his vomit, both form an inseparable whole.
Usually, for excretion and vomiting, it occurs rapid motion of body, with increasing anticipation of ecstasy, while here, the vomiting man no longer has a strong will to get rid of the vomit. Somehow, the passion and the intense physical experience are absent. We see an object, instead of man, mechanically execute and vomits indifferently. This is not man’s excretion or vomit, but rather movement and gesture of excretion and vomit. This is then semiology of excretion and vomiting. Likewise, while flying, diving or surfing, this man doesn’t show his will to struggle against the challenges. They don’t battle with any force. Although those images are of certain motion, such as flying, excreting, vomiting, paddling, and taming the animal, however it is not in a turmoil atmosphere. These pictures are about motion, but the motion itself is suspended and abruptly terminated. Motion is thus replaced by denial of motion. Apparently, Li Jikai endows no sense of motion or dynamics to these figures. They always appear in tranquil gestures, as still-life, even when if they are flying, paddling, or moving with their body.
The consequence is that this man, after being materialized, no longer shows his true passion or free will to us. What is visible is untimely smallness on the surface of the painting. It is gigantic contrast between the smallness and background of absolute void. For Li Jikai, perhaps man lives in this world in a certain scale of proportions rather than an infinite inwardness or motion or emotion. Such contrast tells a metaphor when a child encounters the world. A small figure is often conceived as a child (small body and young age), with an adult face. He lives in an infinite world where time and space interlace one another. The gigantic world let him feel small, hopelessly get lost and fail to face the world as a dynamic subject.
He no longer struggles against the world, as if he stops growing, feeling, no motion, no conquer, nor control (control of an aircraft, this world, or control of any big changes in life.) He plays though. He plays with other objects, animals, or rubbish. He indulges himself in his own world, and dwells solely in his imagination of himself. In another words, he is obsessed by his inner world, and his own smallness. All in all, he is not at all obsessed by the imaginative triumph over this world. Just like the rest of his dehumanized companions, they don’t regard the world as a backdrop for breakthrough, instead, regard himself a harmless object in the backdrop. He takes no action, bemused, or as if in dreams. He is not a person with dreams, but rather a dreaming machine. He has departed from his passion and hope of this world so prematurely. This child is quiet, so ambiguous, as an illusion in a dream, a dreamer in dreams. Li Jikai spreads his surrealistic experiences over the canvas, which constructs a dreamland: pyramidal dust heap, a ray of zigzag light over the dump, dancing in the water as well as silence in the water, aircraft flies as a bird, a man with animal organs, rootless floating toy bricks, magical reality happening on the surface of a rectangular table. This surrealistic world can only be begot in imagination, from a land of dream.
Let me quote one of the titles of Li Jikai’s works, which he says these works are his ‘daydreams’, filled with hundreds of imagery fragment. To analyze the imagery structure of his dreams, Li Jikai tends to choose geometric forms such as squares or straight lines. He loves cubic, and likes strong sense of shapes and forms. He is keen to clear-cut, straight lines and shortcuts. In his paintings, even water doesn’t spill nor flow all over, but rather under control. Li Jikai always set those dream illusion under such control. Once they try to stretch out, he will put a few lines, straight or subtly curved, to guide them delicately. A sharp white zigzag line appears often in most of his works. These small figures, together with all the aircrafts, rubbish, wood pillars and square tables, are sculpted so finely, carefully and intensely. The background is often cut into a piece of color in square shape. Apparently, Li Jikai prefers straight lines to link objects than smooth curves. He tends to avoid curves. He doesn’t bother to weave any complexity. Odd proportions, void, short straight lines, dense images, these small figures stay against the background of a solid color. All of these emphasized the dreamy imagination. All these images intertwine one another clumsily. It escapes from our daily experience. They gather in a surrealistic way of dreamy world without any logic. What is a child got to do with a heap of dust? How could a bug, plant then and a child be put together adjacently on one table? How could a small me emerge above the head of a giant me? And how could an eagle be possibly tamed? All are nothing but daydreaming, which exposes the surrealistic experience by force, binding objects without logical relationship. In such Freudian suggestive ideas, dream works.
Now the question is what dream it is. It is dream about dreams. Those small figures in the painting become objects of fantasy. They close their eyes, standing on height, or lying besides dust heap, or on the table, or in the water. They, with eyes closed, don’t meditate, nor contemplate, nor pray silently, but rather, they are dreaming. All the former actions call for flow of free will, and often an actual space as support that they can lean upon as firm base. But only dreaming, it calls for surrender of consciousness and ration, waive of passion, fully based on impossibility and surrealistic experiences. Obviously, these small figures that departed from their passion and strength are not dreaming with hope but with pure illusions. If these works are Li Jikai’s daydreams, then in side them, these small figures are dreaming too. Here, the dream splits into two layers. The painting is a consequence of a dream, while the subject of the painting is also in dream. That is, when the dreamer swims into dreamers who dreams dreamers. This can be the metapainting of dreams. This is a dream of dreams.
