Written by Yu Yuani
Translated by Lin Bao Jia
Edited by Ralph Hammann
Every city has a landscape, and every life has a type of custom. Lin Bao Ling, who lives in the busy city with beautiful scenery and experienced the indifference of human nature, is depicting the cityscapes which he has experienced through his paintings. In his slightly weary eyes, the beauty of the scenery is a little unrealistic. The whole city and the lights and shadows move constantly. This instant beauty which makes us dizzy is consistent with French poet Charles Baudelaire's(1821-1867) view of the transience of Modernism -- a type of transitory, temporary, coincidental means of expression. His artistic goal is to grasp the light that cannot be grasped. He uses the cityscape, the image of the crowd and light and shadow, as platforms for expression and then he uses the artistic approach and method of expressing images step-by-step to suggest undertones of his feelings and thoughts. In a concrete way, he uses blurring and flowing techniques to express the sense of alienation beneath the brightly-lit city, and then continues to highlight his inner spiritual world in the paintings.2
Regarding his technique of dealing with the lights
Viewing his work, our attention is easily drawn to notice the contrast between the lights and shadows on the painting and the balance and correlation between them. Light and shadow has been the main focus of his painting for the last decade（2003-2013. Taking a closer look at the context of his works, we realize that the light and shadow are formed due to the changes in many factors, such as the build-up of his life experiences, the change of his mental state, changes in techniques and formal elements, etc., showcasing different expressions and meanings. He, who has special feelings for the light and shadow, tried the possibilities of expressing the lights and shadows continuously and especially concentrates on the exploration of the man-made light source.
His interpretations of lights in the artwork could be divided into two categories -- the man-made light sources in nature and the cities. In the artworks that portray man-made light sources in nature, the lights in the artwork are mostly elements that are foils to the landscapes, and it is kind of difficult to tell what his main focus is; whereas, it is easy to classify this type of work when it depicts the beauty of the natural scenery, in works such as Nocturne（2007）and Snowy Nocturne （2011. By comparison, he has a deeper grasp on the man-made light sources in the city. In terms of visual effects, his depictions of man-made light sources in the city can be divided into several types. The first type is similar to the glaring light of photography. This type of work mostly represents certain light spots, and the visual effect is like taking pictures of moving objects or shaking the camera, causing a blurred, out-of-focus effect. Works such as Nightscape（2004）and Brown Nocturne（2005）are two examples, and they are also very experimental and explorational. The second type is the effect of neon lights. He uses a special light (usually yellow or orange), to create the contrast of blazing light and shadow and the sharp contrast of colors. An example of this is Nocturne（2007, where the image is full of the shapes of strong neon light, which seems to describe our loneliness in the ostentations world.
With the development of his thoughts and the change of media he uses to paint, the quality of light and shadow in his paintings become richer and subtler. Other than the above mentioned two types, he turned to experiment with a third type of light, a type of expression similar to the searchlights in theatres. The artworks use black and white to highlight the light source, such as the Nocturne series created from 2008 to 2009. He uses limpid and bright white lights to deepen the feeling of the existence of lights in the artworks, and hides the details of the landscapes in the light and shadow. So the cityscapes that are shorn by strong lights decompose into air particles that are difficult to differentiate. Moving forward with his exploration on light and shadow, he finds it easier to get rid of and blend the distinguishable details of cityscapes that really exist, and then increase the contrast of light and shadow, exploring the differences of the white and white, and the white in white light source and how to represent them. Roughly since 2011, he has blended in some blue and purple on the artwork and created the fourth type of light that contains blue and purple. His artworks have started to contain a lonely and vague, glittering dreamy quality, such as in Fragments of Night in Blue and Purple series（2012), Nocturne in Blue and Purple series（2012). These artworks also have slight differences in compositions, as he uses random methods to leave the perimeter of the painting blank to let the light source seem to shine on the virtual city from all the angles.
There are memories at the end of the lights and shadows
At the end of the bright and dreamy light, the outline of a city emerges. This impression of the city may explain everything about his artworks in a nutshell: it is extremely beautiful, yet problems surface. Painting the cityscapes is only his means. His objective is to create an atmosphere of interweaving of light and shadow. Therefore, for him, painting is not the process of reconstructing or identifying the cityscapes by using shapes or structures. It is more prone to how the painter gains an experience of spiritual connection in these transient light and shadow and the cityscapes that pass through space and time. Through the transient lights and shadows, he triggers the viewers’ memories regarding the city. The effects of these changing lights allow the artificial cityscapes to give rise to infinite philosophical meanings. He needs to use some kind of method to get rid of the predictable cityscapes and certain fixed street structures; only then can he create the sense of events he expects to see in his works. So he analyzes and studies the quality of the lights, blurs the cities and arranges the lights in different locations, or, when the lights move; what kind of visual effects will be generated in the viewers.
Therefore, Bao Ling usually portrays the floating and changing light particles that surround the objects in the city, so the viewers do not easily identify with the actual sites, spaces and buildings structures in the city. An example is 5F Nocturne in blue and purple（2012), which showcases the effects of space; here, the viewers can obviously feel their vision expand due to the lights in the paintings. This effect could easily trigger the viewers’ memories of their sensual experiences and the visual and mental memories. But in fact, what I feel is actually just a volume of light and shadow which is hard to confine, and an inner space that is immeasurable. Similarly, when the viewer approaches the artwork because (s)he is attracted by the bright light, one finds that the figures in the painting lack of details, and that the shapes of the objects are incomplete -- even the perspective is inaccurate, a little distorted.3 Perhaps these seemingly slightly random strokes, distorted objects or inaccurate perspectives, are actually the “flaws” in his works. But these “flaws” do not affect the work’s overall quality. I think the “flaws” are “unexpected fortunes,” and actually do a good job in recording his personal unforgettable experience.
The Night Illuminated the Night
The indescribable cityscapes make one feel lost. Barely being able to distinguish the scene in his artwork makes us realize that the inspirations of his paintings mostly come from his feelings about the environment. Shifting life experiences makes him able to masterfully intertwine facts and imaginations together. His experiences in tropical areas and cold areas results in the temperatures expressed in his works. In other words, he is not only portraying the city, he is also writing about himself. His city’s lights and shadows are not sketches from nature; he is prone to using some symbolic locations to portray a visual experience about how he views the world, instead of utilizing a normal gaze. He crisscrosses the use of different angles of viewpoints, such as cavalier perspective and one point perspective, to construct a multi-angled city, and uses collective pictorial space to juxtapose or displaces certain parts of the landscapes to create his own systematic structure. His viewpoint changes constantly, and this unconventional composition allows the artwork to maintain harmony on the whole instead. He constantly experiments with different artistic expressions of light in different locations, such as artificial light in natural environments, in the street corners, in motion4 and in the dark. He has developed a style in which lights and colors are more emphasized and more important than modeling cityscapes. This forces the viewers to look at the brightly lit parts, and even those who do not understand the symbolic meaning behind the works can simply enjoy the bright atmosphere of the artwork. This is the charm of his works.
Bao Ling’s personal interpretations about the city’s light and shadow, make his works more than just a representation of aesthetic experience. They are the results of his concrete planning, organization and reflections. The cityscapes are the symbols he uses to express his feelings towards the world and the emotional connection between him and us. Through his arrangements and encoding, the light and shadow in the cities are picked up and expand to a visual issue, instead of just a means to portray the landscapes. However, it is not a record that will stay that way forever; it is an existence that changes constantly. “Bao Ling’s light shines upon the fictional city in his heart.” The meaning of light in his artwork is only beginning to expand.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1. A nocturne is a musical composition that is inspired by, or associated with the night. It has soft,
dreamy, graceful, romantic characteristics; Bao Ling hopes his works have these characteristics, so his works were often entitled “nocturne”.
2. Regarding the discussion of the expression of lights and shadows in his artworks and antinomies, refer to the master thesis: The Flowing City Light and Darkness at Night: the Exploration of the Meanings Behind the Paintings by Lin Bao Ling.
3.For example, in Nocturne in Black and white (2010), part of the spaces in the painting is like the out-of-focus photograph formed on convex lens, causing space and perspective to distort.
4. For example, his artwork Speeding (commissioned by Singapore Telecommunications in 2008).
沒有留言:
張貼留言