Exhibition View of “Painting, Wandering” in 2024.

While “Painting, Wandering” featuring recent paintings by Liu Shangying was closed at FutureLand Art Center, this artist who have devoted himself to seeking the unknown had a different psychological feeling from before. “The sense of loss is actually a question about how to start over,” said Liu. In addition to the painting series that he completed in Lop Nur and A-erh-chin Mountains of Xinjiang, Ejina Banner of Inner Mongolia from 2016 through to 2021, “Painting, Wandering” focused on the site-specific paintings by the artist along the Eastern Tianshan Mountains in Xinjiang from 2022 through to 2024. During the exhibition, the film “Lost Journey” which took the artist three years to finish editing was open to the public for the first time. The “Untitled” series based on the remnants of his burnt works brought the starting point of this exhibition to 2011. It was in this year that Liu Shangying went to Ali, Tibet for the first time, starting his journey that lasts for over ten years.

Liu Shangying has moved from the macroscopic expression of nature in the past to a more meticulous observation, while keeping his pursuit for new uncertainties. Thus his expressive methods have become more diverse and specific, such as he collected stone clips and pasted them in his painting like a diligent tile worker in his “Flower Valley Path”.

Through the following interview, Liu Shangying shared the progressive relationship among various creative stages and evolution of his mentality in his latest solo exhibition; the possibilities of transformation naturally arose in the process of his walk in the Eastern Tianshan Mountains; the creative process and his thoughts around the “Untitled” series; his further advocacy of “intervening in painting with physical experience” as well as his profound thinking on issues such as existence, time, memory, nature and the essence of art around his consistent creative concept.

Born in 1974 in Kunming, Yunan, Liu Shangying belongs to the Mongolian ethnic group of China. He currently works as Professor and Vice Dean of the Department of Oil Painting at CAFA. He teaches at the Third Studio of the Department of Oil Painting at CAFA, lives and works in Beijing.

CAFA ART INFO: From “Walking Between Worlds” at the TAG Art Museum in 2023 which revolved around “painting and walking", to “Painting, Wandering” at FutureLand Art Center at the end of 2024, what adjustments have you made to your creative mentality and direction compared with the previous exhibition?

Liu Shangying: On the second day after the opening of my  exhibition at FutureLand Art Center, French curator Olivier Kaeppelin asked me, “Do you feel empty in your heart when you finished this project?” I was surprised by his insight into the artist’s psychology. The process is always exciting, and no matter what the result is, it also declares an “end”. Therefore, Olivier and I discussed the “sense of loss” which points to a new beginning.

For artists, having the awareness of starting over really means a state of mind and body that they continue to think and invest. How to start over? I don’t want to be a wilderness artist tagged by the outside world. When my creations are mentioned, my stories are paid more attention, which becomes boring. I never want to make up stories.

Liu Shangying, Screenshots of Lost Journey, Video, 75'49''，16：9，2022-2024 and Workshots

My experience in nature, whether through painting or video, can only be presented in a very limited way. An exhibition does not need to and cannot present everything. I have encountered diversified things in the process, through which I must experience in my creation. They are the process and action themselves, paralleling to the result of painting. I try to record what happened through video, but I cannot keep everything. What happened along the way allowed me to continuously grow some new branches in the seemingly familiar working path, whether they are long or short, I take one step at a time, which is completely different from working in my studio.

The feeling that I felt powerless when I first went to Tibet is still there. From being powerless to being shocked by nature, after I have walked for many years, with the dynamic relationship among experience, consciousness and state constantly superimposed, I have also gained a lot of new understandings, and new problems have also come one after another. So far, I still don’t know what to do next, but I vaguely feel that I have to move forward. I also need more courage to give up some things, such as a more stable lifestyle, but this does not mean “seclusion”.

CAFA ART INFO: What new specific directions has this change in your mentality opened up?

Liu Shangying: The new questions come from my cognitive changes, but I don’t know where the changes will lead my creation. Over the past two years in the Eastern Tianshan Mountains in Xinjiang, some of my works were made of wool, stone flakes, stones, horseshoes and other materials that have excited me. I felt the power and inspiration of natural details, and the endless levels they embody are limitless. When I was in the site-specific atmosphere, sometimes I felt very limited. I cannot go beyond the natural field that I am in, and the connection between the details in nature and my body perception becomes deeper and more specific. Those stone flakes and agate stones are ever-changing, and I carefully arrange them into my paintings like a tile worker. In the process of picking up stone flakes, the rich and impactful details of nature were even greater than the moments when I stand on the top of the mountains. This is also a new experience I gained during my trip in the Eastern Tianshan Mountains. I hope to mobilize this energy in a more in-depth working method as for me contingency and uncertainty are still very important.

Liu Shangying, Screenshots of Lost Journey, Video, 75'49''，16：9，2022-2024; Tianshan Mountains No. 32, Footprints.

If I have a clear preconception and know where my painting leads to, “Lost Journey” will not exist. Uncertainty is the direction that I am getting more interested in. In my opinion, the best state of creation is to use the simplest, most intense and dense language form to convey a most uncertain feeling. But there is a contradiction between the two, so it is particularly important to coordinate the boldness, contingency and subconsciousness of creation, as well as the energy mobilized by the outside world. Thinking alone is far from enough, because it lacks stimulation, nutrients and watering, perhaps we should call it inspiration, which is also the biggest distress of artists. There are still many things in my current paintings that I have not reached, but this does not mean that I will enter the vast ocean of installation or performance art. It's just that my current painting path is facing wider, but I hope to make my painting foothold more concentrated.

CAFA ART INFO: In the process of walking in Tianshan Mountains, which parts make you feel particularly excited or disappointed?

Liu Shangying: The excitements brought by the north and south sides of Tianshan Mountains were completely different. For example, the beauty of the northern foothills of Tianshan Mountains make people feel close to being at a loss; while the desolation of the south makes people want to stay mentally, but the body feels just the opposite. In the process of getting closer and closer, I found that the two sides were finally connected, and I was immersed in a deep uncertainty, not just novelty.

Liu Shangying, Flower Valley Path, The Shadow of Sun.

Specifically speaking, the inclusion of natural materials in my work is a natural thing, but it is not enough. I should stay longer, longer, and even have the opportunity to live there and grow more branches. This is the direction I am looking forward to. Of course, maybe I will get bored if I stay too long. Between imagination and reality, all kinds of possibilities exist. My way is to act first. My experience tells me that only after taking action can I gain experience beyond imagination. I will doubt any artistic creation if it is produced without any physical experience.

While waiting for the moment when the accidental factors touched me, I suddenly grabbed something unexpected, and the work “Stars” was born. When I was standing on the edge of the cliff and smashing rocks downwards, an unrepeatable present existence was achieved, which was an exciting moment in life.

Liu Shangying, Flower Valley Path series and Stars.

CAFA ART INFO: The “Untitled” series in the exhibition is based on the burned works. What does it mean to you that these works appear in the exhibition hall?

Liu Shangying: The fire occurred to my studio in 2016 meant that all my previous works were gone. I thought that I had to leave something behind at that time, so I dug out some unburned residues from charcoal ash, but I didn't know what I could do with them. So for a long time, I didn't think about turning them into works.

Occasionally, I touched these archived ashes after my studios moved three times. They seemed to have really become traces of time and would no longer hurt me. I could start to think about them rationally from a creative perspective. From 2022 to the end of 2023, I started to deal with them, but I still didn't think clearly then. Until the curator for this exhibition believed that this sad event itself had a profound underlying logical connection with my subsequent walk, and they might appear in this exhibition.

The “Untitled” series presents a new sense of life. I used some golden and colored lines to draw on it with restraint. I hope these lines are calm. In my opinion, these lines are like some kind of connection, passing through a long memory, connecting my past with the present, and also forming the current existence of “Untitled”. The details of these lines look very ordinary, but they project my current state and form a kind of translation, which also makes me think about my future creation. No matter where I am, no matter what I have experienced, art will eventually point to the id.

CAFA ART INFO: The title of the exhibition mentions the concept of “wandering”. What do you think is the distance between “wandering” and walking in the ordinary sense? How do you convey your experience of wandering to others?

Liu Shangying: “Wandering” is actually walking without a goal, but my heart expects to have a goal, so in a dynamic rather than stagnant way, to have a relationship with the surroundings, everything is random, the real encounter is destined to appear, but it is fleeting.

It is not enough to look for the goal inside the work. Painting for the sake of painting is not what I care about. The key is to get in touch with nature through painting. That connection is not between the subject and the object, and naturally it cannot be objectified, but is a microcosm of yourself. This sounds a bit abstract, but it is indeed the driving force of my art, so I don’t think about whether others can fully understand my perceptual experience through my paintings, otherwise I cannot work.

Exhibition View of “Painting, Wandering” in 2024. Liu Shangying, Dance of Horses, Nine Stones.

In the natural scene, many of my works are actually flawed if they are judged by the integrity of the painting expression, but I never bring them back for further improvement or modification. When these works are presented in the space of an art museum, viewers will inevitably compare my paintings with their experience of watching traditional paintings, which will cause some problems, but I don’t mind. What I value more is how I can intervene in a constantly deepening dynamics through nature. I think the real experience at this moment is far greater than the perfection of painting expression itself.

CAFA ART INFO: You look forward to contingency and the unknown. Compared with the contingency that constantly occurs in the city, why is the distant place more attractive to you?

Liu Shangying: In Beijing, I often encounter some accidents and surprises. They will touch me, but I always feel that there is something between them. I even feel nervous and think more. The overall experience of people in the city is covered in fixed relationships and we cannot escape. It is a highly socialized and regularized order, which is artificially formulated, rather than operating according to natural laws. The real side is often hidden very deeply. Nature is pure, and it shows the pure truth. I think art should be like this.

Liu Shangying, Tianshan Mountains series and Waste Land Plan No. 16.

Xichuan once described me as standing on the cliff edge of romanticism, just one step away from the pursuit of poetry and the distance. If I say that when I first went to Tibet, I was still more romantic and idealistic, but it did bring me out of the inertia of reality, which is very important to me. In the next ten years when I have walked in the wild, from the macro to the micro, I began to enter a calmer and gentler state, and I went deep into the details of nature to examine myself. This is a process I have inevitably experienced.

There may be a switch in Giorgio Morandi’s inner world. After turning it on, you can go behind a pile of bottles and get into a more profound world. That world is the depth of nature that I understand, a pure truth. But he lives in a city in a turbulent era. He transcends these, and I admire him very much.

CAFA ART INFO: Intervening in a deeper and more detailed aspect of nature, making your work be more closely integrated with nature, does it mean that your future creation will be closer to land art?

Liu Shangying: My work is not quite the same as land art, but I like land art. I like the works by Scottish artist Andy Goldsworthy very much. Rivers and Tides is a documentary about him. His works have a power in plainness and a certain Eastern temperament. He is so good at using the simplest method to complete a most uncertain and infinitely poetic space of imagination, that is very charming. Richard Long’s relationship with nature in his walking is also unique. I also think Walter de Maria’s “The Lightning Field” and Robert Smithson’s “Spiral Jetty” are great. They express the state between the macro energy of nature and the human psychology.

Exhibition View of “Painting, Wandering” in 2024. Liu Shangying, Rainbow Series.

CAFA ART INFO: How do you think your work path is related to the present?

Liu Shangying: In terms of the era we live in, I am definitely retreating, going back to an earlier and more distant point to look for possibilities. I have always wondered how painting was born, such as paintings in prehistoric caves, and I have also consulted some literature, but it is basically discussed from the perspective of archaeological research, and there seems to be no final conclusion. This is something that makes me extremely curious. What I think of now is that painting is an instinct of human beings, and its emergence should point to a kind of communication rather than aesthetics

In the current era, many things have been diluted by faster ways. How many people will ask themselves what is the purpose of painting? If tracing back to the source, I seem to be able to see something. If I cannot see it clearly, I can keep a little distance from the present, so as to restore some of the most basic and simplest perceptions of the world, which can help me think about the basic question of why I live in this world as an individual. And the medium I choose to enter is the so-called painting.

Liu Shangying, Flower Valley Path Series.

I have a strong psychological induction while Listening to the long tune of Mongolians on the grassland. This should be the purest part of art, and purity is connected to many uncertainties. Walking is a way of experiencing the cognition of “uncertainty”, including action and psychology. It may never provide an answer, but it will enrich you. Because everything will only have a relative purity, absolutism can easily make things simple and arbitrary. The existence of things is not either this or that, but is intertwined. Artists do not strategically check the range according to the present state, but we want to establish a profound insight that transcends time.

CAFA ART INFO: You just mentioned “your skepticism about creation if it is produced without any physical experience", why is physical experience so important?

Liu Shangying: I think what I perceive through my physical experience is real. Only by practicing it can I realize the boundaries between things. If people lose the truth in their own perception, where is the boundary between the true and false in art? I really don’t know why I should do art anymore.

Liu Shangying, Flower Valley Path Series

Text (CN) by Mengxi, edited (EN) by Sue/CAFA ART INFO.

Image Courtesy of the Artist.