Concerning the relationship between man and the contemporary world, perhaps, all due to turbulence and chaos from high-speed change of the physical world of our time, we can hardly find much micro- internal- depiction of such experience in the contemporary Chinese art. However, Li Jikai his space of discourses right from this theme. His work is almost a metaphorical autobiography of a boy, a little emotional and sentimental. With his translucent brushwork in childish cartoon style, he paints an imaginative Utopia more than dwelling within mundane worldly reality and experience. He has never stopped his imagination of happiness and himself. His art thus links to more genuine state of being as a whole. What is convincing is that he has found dwelling for his imagination.
I. Son of Forest
Li Jikai’s imagination is often bound to forest. From his Graffiti work from earlier time, he is like a child just returning from forest who then starts to present us all those discovered images from forest, mushroom, rabbit, plants, insects and flowers. Although in his Table Story series, which he painted later, in which the games on the table return to reality, he often sets the scenario in a forest. Moreover, the desk itself is a product from forest. Table can be reverted back to a tree, a green paradise for birds and animals. In his later series of works with dump as motif, the piled up abandoned timber wood structures the fundamental context of his painting. Denying the fact that there are all sorts of material in a dump, Li Jikai reveals his interest through this choice.
Our world was originated from forest. Mankind is naturally the son of forest. This is his obsession. Forest is home of his heart and soul. It accordingly constructs a metaphorical world of illusion. Through this, an imaginative way of speaking occurs and grows.
It is very likely such obsession was originated from his childhood. It was around that age when a man is most sensitive to feel the nature. The forest perceived in a child’s eyes is undoubtedly grandiose and magic. At the same time, childhood is also a time when we tend to be fascinated by fairy tales and legends the most. Reading inspires our imagination, leaves vivid traces in our memory. However, this experience and memory could disperse or fade away along with growing-up for most of us, except a few who can grasp them tight, feel their being and appreciate their value. As return, forest then becomes an inexhaustible treasure of imagination.
Forest could be a synonymy of childhood. Fundamentally, it means real happiness that is original yet unreachable, a mythical prototype and symbol. With its entire idealistic nature endowed by memory, it particularly implies that a form of freedom is growing. This forms such sharp contrast against modern life. It is meant to be a Utopia that we start to be aware of only till we grow-up. All re-imagination of this after we grow up then just indicates the ‘lost-and-found’ of our happiness.
In one of the paintings in rather realistic style, two boys sit side-by-side on a red brick podium, while forest stretches behind them. This painting is probably not the most identical that demonstrates Li Jikai’s own artistic style, it somehow conveys the root of his emotion with its secrete. Between the rural nature and the urban reality, this podium is just like a borderline between a real world and imagination. Thus his painting becomes an event that occurs on this borderline.
There is basic framework in his works so far: a boy and timber wood dwell together. The timber wood can be reincarnated into a desk, a stake, a bed, a pagoda-shape object piled up by toy bricks, a box like a mini-coffin where man can lie in, or a dump of abandoned timbers. In the painting, timber wood, as fragment or episode, symbolizes the entire forest, which recollects the memory of one’s home and happiness and, at the same time, highlights the lonely and sorrow boy. The wasted timbers resemble the ruin of destroyed forest, and then symbolize the collapse of the disorder reality when the spiritual backbone is removed.
The boy refuses to leave these timbers, as if he is on a raft in the sea. The sea symbolizes the real world. These boys stand alone on the top of stakes or toy-bricks, wandering about the void of memory. His mood is far from being powerful with strong free will or flying freely in a surrealistic world. On the contrary, he’s filled with fears of falling. Once he falls, he would be swallowed by the reality. To accept the manipulation of the principle of reality means to become a puppet from a living creature. Then, dissimilation will be an inevitable consequence. Therefore, he would rather standing on the stakes and bearing insulation and suffers the unbalance than living in the reality. It occurs me the Baron in Italo Calvino's Baron on the Tree, who refuses to come down to the ground, because it’s only on the tree could he feel that he is the real himself.
The tie between life and forest can compare to fish and water, birds and wind, child and mother. To separate them would be uncomfortable and sad. That’s why the boys in Li Jikai’s painting are often sad, helpless, obsessed by memory and daydreaming, in a mood of vanity. They struggle, with symptoms of insomnia and vomit. He carries a sign of Red Cross as if it is his birthmark. When his sentiment and sorrow become over-dosed, he will become hysteria and then, maltreat himself. In 2004, Li Jikai painted a boy as an alien, whose nostalgia was obvious and odd. The boy is biologically atavic, showing part of his gene is from those animals in the forest, as if he used to live in the forest, in the tree, raised by some other animals, and spent his childhood playing and fighting joyfully with other cubs. Then he was thrown out of his own homeland into the man’s world. Till then, horns and odd ears remain on his head, wings and tail grow from his body. This is all because of nostalgia, being separated from the forest.
II. Boys with Mirror Images
An interesting phenomenon in contemporary art is that the figure in the painting somehow resembles the look of the painter himself. This is the counterforce against the collectiveness in the revolutionary past, and as well an emphasis of the realization of self-esteem in contemporary art. It is so obvious that these boys in the painting look just like the painter Li Jikai, their round head, lathy eyes and a small sipping mouth. This image itself conveys the painting with the nature of autobiography. It too represents an ideal fiction based on squeamishness in politics. The ‘self’, like an eidolon in fairy tales, deliberately keep himself in the state of innocence. This image conveys an absolute moving approach, and yet, also in danger of narcissism.
The painting By the Side of Happiness (2002) is an accomplishment of self-observation in the dimension of reality. In this series, the boy behave rather normal daily way, as if, after escaping and imagining over and over again, the boy decisively sit in front a mirror, mirror of reality. He gazes at himself, and tries to understand himself.
Although it seems a bit narcissistic, quite the opposite, this action helps the artist to get rid of the overdose of narcissism and self-esteem. Narcissus gazed at the image of himself reflected in the water, and finally died because of his immensely obsession by the perfection and purification of himself. In this painting, By the Side of Happiness, what Li Jikai tries to do is exactly to pull back himself, back to reality. When the pendulum of illusion almost reaches vanity at one end, it needs to wave back so as to keep the balance of in realm of ration, so as to avoid the tragedy of Narcissus. As a matter of fact, all what we’ve experience in reality will help to get rid of the pretentious, artificial and fragile side of the power of our imagination. Only through a journey of imagination could only departed from the solid ground now and then, one can reach the realm, which the poet Paul Valery has described perfectly well as his poem says, Fly freely, like a bird, not as feather.
The attention he pays to reality doesn’t make him a Realist though. He applies metaphors to the world. His illusive style seems as it weakens the intensity of his expression, but in fact, this allows him to acquire further possibilities to get closer to the essence of art. Let us compare his work with the so called Cruelty of Youth group, which, although taking the legacy of awareness of individual life from the Scar Painting group from 1980s, it somehow emphasizes still the influence from external reality and increasing political value. This group of young artists, who carry this label of concept, risk to be trapped by the political schema, hence the full sequences of works are full of exaggerated exposure of pain. This is kind of pain which was presented as fragment of violent scenario in Xie Nanxing’s works, while in another painter Yin Chaoyang’s work, it is rather revealed by ritual scenes and symbolic narration.
However, these two artists soon broke through this subjective label and turned to more objective matters. This might have just proved the limit of this label. To compare with above, what Li Jikai has revealed us is internal illusion. He doesn’t give us just a simple exposure of reality, but rather genuinely concerns about some very fundamental reality, or in another word, a more long-lasting statement of reality, which is the pain and happiness of Being itself. If we take Cruelty of Youth this concept as a piece of heavy timber wood, then Li Jikai just lets the piece of wood flow in the water, which immediately diminish the tangible weight, and then reverts it to the pain of adolescence itself, a kind of sorrows of Young Werther that could happen to everyone in all different times. He is fully ware not to have the kind of false melancholy, the pretentious attitude (as in the Chinese ancient idiom) “to force to convey false melancholy in order to compose a new verse”. He discovered a poetic narration to combine a peculiar fairy tale style with forest, the archetypal symbol for happiness. This is the consequence of internalization. The pain and sadness appear to be so small, but it has much more sustainable power of truth, when such expression acquires a sense of the completeness of being as its backdrop. This is where the charisma of Li Jikai’s art dwells.
III. Cockhorse, Snail & Lightening
In the movie A.I. by Steve Spielberg, there is a very moving moment when mankind were extinct, a toy bear sits by himself, sewing his clothes. The power of this scene has double layers. The toy bear is a symbol of life being fragile, lonesome and helpless. On the other hand, what his motion shows us a strong force of life, an effort to rescue everything from falling, remaining in hopes.
In Li Jikai’s painting, there are always two contradicted self-imagination that turn up alternatively. One image is a boy who is passive, sentimental and a little autistic. He lingers between nostalgia and fear of reality, helplessly, letting himself devoured by phrenitis and sense of vanity. The most extreme action he tends to take is shown in Bright Sky. An imagination of flying pops up in the painting, in which the boy seems to determine to take off from the strip, forever escaping from puzzled memory and flying in the sky of imagination. However, this little boy has put on his astronaut’s helmet, but not yet full make up his mind. He seems to be still contemplating. But in other works, this boy appears to be positive where we see he makes incredible effort to transform the physical world into a real home. In one of his series, Wing: Flowers (2003), he combines man’s face with flower, which seems to return or convert to forest in imagination. There are unforgettable details in his Desktop series. The boy has planted a mushroom. He waters it, hoping there will be a forest growing out of a world of armored concretes. This is undoubtedly a much more active and imaginative action. Reminiscence would lead to sentimentalism, and then dream and passion diminishes unconsciously. There is probably a much more brave path, that is to apply the imagination of forest to broader time and space, and then, transform reality into our homeland, right here right now.
When it approaches to an end of an idealized narration out of adolescence, or in another word to say when an artist established his very personal style, without doubt, he should be able to associate with more complex experience of reality in his work. Then it ought to call upon his self-investigation. This is especially true for artist like Li Jikai, whose work has been almost an autobiography, the level of self-examination convey his entire knowledge how he conceives reality. His painting Cockhorse & Snail (2005) could be the most accurate outline to show where Li Jikai is at the moment. In this painting, the boy, whose face we have been now more than familiar with, riding on cockhorse with a lightening right over his head and a snail nearby on the ground.
There are three forms of destiny or life tracks. Cockhorse symbolizes rotating at the same spot; snails represent slow action, while the third, lightening, symbolizes challenge. If the boy on the cockhorse decides to become a daydreamer, so passive, refuses to grow up, then the snail would be an absolute surrender, falling into reality and carrying its weight. On the other hand, lightening means an inspiration, a powerful release of the force of life. It can immediately arouse the passion of life, leaving a dazzling flare in the dark sky.
This painting, portraying his triple roles, might be Li Jikai’s most complete personal mirror image. There is a chance, probably very good chance, that a fresh image, simple and yet merged with all the richness of consciousness will born out of thus complex integration.
December 2006
