Cheng Yong's Space——Fan Yang

        The works of Mr. Cheng Yong has fallen into two categories, that is, "Space of city" and "Human body and space", named by himself Mr. Cheng said, " I'll set the limits of my artistic creation somewhere between the imagery and the material, making the visual sense of my works staying somewhere between the concrete and the abstract and between the double dimension and the three dimension" The sentence is a little bit longer, demanding some pondering. Therefore while we are enjoying the delicious visual sense, we shall feel the taste and feeling of the space of thinking.

        Directly perceived through the sense, the "Human body and space" of Mr. Cheng is quite full of dynamics. He firstly portrayed carefully on the big dimension linen cloth lively human bodies, which, according to the realism, are drawn attentively and carefully. They are so incredibly beau fur that the hypocrites will have to peep at them through the small gaps between the fingers of hand that they use to cover their eyes. This step is the beauty of the intuition, sort of concrete existence. It's the initiative construction. The construction is followed by destruction and recombination This makes us think about the human history, in which construction is followed by destruction, reconstruction and then re-destruction and so on. Maybe, in the human spiritual space happens the same process? Therefore, Mr. Cheng takes his big painting brush, mercilessly brushing the black and white pigments on the depicted woman bodies with brude, cruel, and primary style. He breaks the splendid china into pieces, making your heart palpitating! However, although the china has been broken, their pieces remain, on which there are some fantastic parts. We can imagine the wild strength of Mr. Cheng when he is committing the violence, while at the same time we can detect that he also possesses some gentle feelings. The human being is really a complicated animal who firstly tries to make something perfect, then tore it into pieces, destructs it and scribbles on it. This process, I guess, should be full of happiness when it is carried out by an artist. What the psychological condition accompanying the process is like? I cannot express it, but I can imagine it. The foreigner, whose name I have forgot, must have felt extremely happy, when he brushed a pair of moustache on the face of Mona Lisa. Without doubt, the happiness would have to be let off only by something like the wild laughter "Ha--ha, ha--ha" in the Beijing Opera of China. This kind of extreme happiness would only be got occasionally by artists who have entered into the space of the artistic creation. The destruction after completion is quite complicated and can endure long-time appreciation. It is like the fragmentary Roman Arena, or the stone columns of the Yuanmingyan Palace. It possesses the previous substantial and brilliant content. It is concrete, offering a feeling of wanting to speak but fail to open the mouth. It's greater than to force oneself to express depression in order to write new poems. After the destruction, however, the reconstruction follows. Mr. Cheng claimed in the title of his works that it's called "reaching agreement". With synthesized material sticked onto the tin foil of the cigarette packet easily within the reach of our hand, he cut the picture into parts, making your visual sense be dismembered, cutted, then gathered together, and sorted out. And by so doing, the agreement would be reached. In consequence, you will get a new space, and the artist wilt finishes his works and the process of his creation. This is what Mr. Cheng is to tell us.

        Then let's see the "serial of city" of Mr. Cheng .

        If the "serial of human body" belongs to the sober, rational, and straight-linear abstract combination, the "serial of city" possesses a sort of disturbance, craziness, and unpredictable confusion. The buildings and houses are a kind of media, or a representation, whose appearance of stable or unstable cubes glimmer on the paintings. The powerful light gives an appearance of pale-white color, just like the light emitted by the lamp on the foot of the building at night, showing us with an incredible bizarre and motley effect. The blue mist rises spirally, develops vigorously, then it descends, and spread all over the place. Is it the colorful fog of the city or the air pollution? Is it the product of the artist's intuition or the people's impression? When I write this article under the light, it is late in the night, I go onto the balcony, and look down out of the window at the noisy street, which looks in some extent really like the paintings of Mr. Cheng. The artist has seen what came into his vision

        field. Anyway, the benevolent see benevolence and the wise see wisdom -- different people have

        different views. Mr. Cheng said, "The creation of human being becomes a prison cell of the nature.

        The nature imprisoned in turn becomes a prison cell of the human being. The conflict and overlap-

        ping between the human being and space has come to construct the picture of human society." Then, how about the city? Is it just the prison cell that is created by the human being and that in the end imprisons the human being themselves? The question should be posed to Mr. Cheng and to us.

        "To exist is the reallest. And the artistic creation is a sort of learning through experience of the existence." said Mr. Cheng.

        Therefore, Mr. Cheng is depicting the space in which he exists. He is learning through experience his "imagery and material", and his "concrete and abstract". His idea and practice show themselves on the canvas. And we see his "serial of city" No. 1, No. 2, No, 3, --- No. 13.

        The theme is the social, philosophical humanistic, existent, and living space around you andme, while the creational means is Mr. Cheng's. Mr. Cheng is not a sociologist, and therefore he should not have had to bear the responsibility of exploring profound problems. He is neither a natural scientist, and therefore the air and light pollution of city is out of his business. Mr. Cheng is an artist, who usually has the power of the most direct feeling and understanding, which is just the sixth sense lacked by the layman. Therefore, only poet tells us: the rosy clouds and the lonely duck fly side by side. The pool in autumn and the sky share one color. And only man of letters observes comprehensively and tells us: the mountain that becomes range when seen in one direction be-comes peak when seen in an other direction. And it is high when seen nearby and low when seen far away. Therefore, Mr. Cheng told me tonight that all around us is the "space of city" which is created by us and which in turn has created us.

        Mr. Cheng himself wrote, “there is no romance of the Frenchman, or sober of the German, or freedom of the American in his works. But what there is just the realm of the oriental painting." But I do not agree with him. Now that Mr. Cheng has mentioned France, Germany, and America, he must have thought of them, and therefore he must have done it. But what should be made clear is that during the process of artistic creation, he has done it with an integrated style of thinking, an integrated material, in a style of oriental innocence, that is, a style of indulgence under control, and arbitrary within limitation.

(Fan Yang, President and professor of the art college of the Nanjing Normal University)