Based on years of Western education background and local life experiences, JIANG Peiyuan's art creation clues are multiplex. The wide application of computer technology and the daily popularization of mobile network have changed the individual thinking method as well as the dimension. In the context of post-internet age, Peiyuan's art practices present multiple features.
In the work of "Widow Burning", he quoted classical art images and used printing technology to transfer them onto panels, in order to form the creation background layer. Then he made a series of painterly layers on the basic background layer. Finally, he fixed his intervention of the panel and the images themselves through mechanical, non-painterly abstract graphs. Here, Peiyuan's art practices mainly are the exploration of self-denial and redefinition of art language. He hopes that the works can make multiplicity, ambiguity and contradictory coexist.
Peiyuan's another creative clue is mainly about the mutual relationship between paintings and images, the original work and the copy made for public appreciation, the aesthetic taste between good and bad paintings and proprietary value of art. Such as in his work "SPH4058", Peiyuan used a cheap, ready-made oil painting which bought from a street stall. He removed and altered part of its existing visual information by covering and hiding the surface color with pencil, so that the painting can display some other meanings; both visually of course and contextually with regard to boundaries between painting and drawing/ production and reproduction. Peiyuan says, "I try to use graphite pencils to obstruct and cover the surface color of images, by which way some visual information eliminated and transformed into new meanings. I always like the visual experience of the contrast brought about by the transformation of the image contexts in the painting because it evokes a darkly humorous sense of drama."
On the concept first or practice first issue, JIANG Peiyuan, in the process of repeated pondering various media and materials, breaks the customary creative methods and the public interest, reconstructed new taste in vision and concept ideas. The work"Perfect Crime" is an unexpected special visual effect in the practice: during the process, the intervention on image resulted in uncontrollable effects has instead become the interesting part! So he stopped and let it stay at that stage. While the work" 2016"is the simulation of visual after-image (discarded daily express package) It is made of multiple creative methods (printmaking, watercolor and solidified acrylic paint parody ready-made etc.). The work "Two" is the mixing product of concepts and practices, which as the title suggests: two of what? When it is presented in the exhibition space, the audience spontaneously connect and unscramble it with their own experience according to it's materials, shapes and colors.
In the work "Somewhere in Between", he completely blacked out both the front and the back sides of tracing paper with graphite pencils until it formed a flat object. The initial motivation actually came from the method of fine pencil drawings: tracing paper is usually used as image transfer medium and plays the role of carbon. Being used as a drawing tool, the tracing paper is discarded when the transparent process finished. From the visual aspect, the tracing paper looks very similar to usually defined drawing: they are the traces that pencils leave on the paper. From the functional perspective view, they never will be regarded as drawing. However, when Peiyuan tried to black out both sides of the tracing paper, he found out that it presents interesting features in the form. The concept of "Somewhere in between" as a medium that exists between the objects has become an independent work itself.
About the artist
JIANG Peiyuan was born in 1983 in Jiangsu province, and graduated from Birmingham institute of art and design (UCE) in U.K. in 2006(B.A.), and graduated from the University of the Arts London Chelsea College of Art and Design (UAL) in 2008(M.A.). He recently lives and works in Beijing.
About the exhibition
Duration: Dec 27 2014 - Jan 25 2015
Venue: BM ART
Opening: Dec 27 2014 Sat 14:00-17:00
Add: No. 5, Huan Tie Li, Chaoyang District, Beijing
Courtesy of the artist and BM ART.