Absurdity and Symbolism of Dai Zengjun's Works

        Modernity is the common background for the creation of contemporary oil painting. It is no doubt that Modernity, this double-edged sword, determines the choice of contemporary art.  From the general prospective, there are two major creation positions in Chinese oil painting. Those who hold the first position such as Fang Liyun and Yue Minjun tend to reveal, in incisive and acute way, the confusion and helplessness of the contemporary people. Those from the other position could feel profoundly the keenly felt pain brought about to our spirits by this modernity. These painters include Chao Ge and Ding Fang. They leave this modernity behind and try to find our common spiritual home. They believe that our spiritual home which has been related to lofty and perpetual through all ages has greater attraction nowadays, and deserves our greater yearning and pursuit.
        So let's see what on earth has Dai done? Here we take Chinese oil painting as the background, and make contrast the above mentioned two positions, and analyze their paintings and judge their contributions.
        First of all, Dai Zengjun's creations have clear spiritual choices. The first difference is that he do not make simple reproduction of life scenes  as his creation purpose. Instead, he has a deep understanding of the context of Modernity and chooses a unique position.  Different from the above mentioned positions, his position expresses the confusion and helplessness as well as question towards traditional spirit or concepts.  He creates a dream which is directed by him. In such a dream, human are in a peculiar atmosphere together with animals, forming a strange relation. Such juxtaposition is a further questioning towards the sense of absurd of human survive.  Meanwhile, such questioning has its symbolic sense.
        In his work, first of all, it has a man, which could be regarded as the painter himself and also, be interpreted as the contemporary human in a broader sense, an abstract philosophical sense of people. At the other end of Dai's contradiction, is another kind of human existence: a creature, an animal from different species.  This man, who is neither vibrant nor moribund, is capturing and seeking, blind and even dedicated. Such action could either be regarded as indifferent effort to obtain, or blindness and absurdity of the pursuit of purpose of life. There is also a kind of work, among other similar ones, that makes the plots from fables and idioms, revealing the painter's scoff and question towards conventional classic concepts as well as stepping forward to put human beings before traditional cultures which is pitiful and funny. Under such condition, they also deserve our sympathy and respect. This could be regarded as the jocose edition of  "Grieve about his misfortunes and fume at his incompetence".
        Such conception and creation is insightful; such position is distinctively unique and such expression is of rich intellect.  While accurate expression of this position shows on pondering of expression and choose of painting language. In another words, great imagination, decisive judgment and expertise are all in need to decide the following questions, such as: with what image could play the role of this man; which kind of animals and what dynamic should be applied to the painting as the other side?; and in what circumstance and atmosphere will they be symbolic? Compared with those paintings created out of photography, such art involves superabundance artistic creation.
        The creation of Contemporary Chinese oil painting could be divided into concept type and language type. The former type emphasizes critical significance and sociological significance of concept; whereas the latter one, spirituality and expression of painting language. Few works could make up the gap between these two major types. Only Mr. Shang Yang's creation talents, together with his great creation talent and prominent achievements, could bridge this gap. Or rather, his brand new creative outputs flooded this gap and then formed his own pyramid.  From this perspective, though Dai's work could not be compared with Shang Yang's, we could also see his successful anastomosis of concept and language. His works have both bright ideas and accurate painting language. The idea is unique and the language has its full expression. They are filled with aesthetic perception of painting language and such aesthetic perception is in conformity with the requirement of works' concept.
For the above mentioned reasons, I extremely treasure Mr. Dai Zengjun's works and admire his paintings.

        Xu Fuhou
        Autumn, 2012.