Jiang Cheng's "U": Everything Is the Body

Jiang Cheng's "U": Everything Is the Body

Author: Wang Kaimei

"When the puzzle in the mirror finally reveals itself, I am confronted with my own face."

Wang Kaimei discusses Jiang Cheng’s Exhibition "U" at AIKE

Upon entering the ongoing solo exhibition "U" by artist Jiang Cheng at AIKE Gallery, the first sensation that assaults both your mind and vision is encapsulated in one word: enormity. The gallery's four white walls bear only six artworks, at least four of which measure over two meters in both length and width. Notably, two paintings hang on a single white wall extending over sixteen meters, their generous spacing further amplifying the spatial openness of the venue. If this spatial grandeur hasn’t yet made you realize the pivotal role of "largeness" in this exhibition, then surely the "grandeur" of what is depicted in the paintings must have taken you by surprise by now.

Each artwork within the gallery is essentially a face filling the entire canvas, or more precisely, parts of six faces that fill the frame after being cropped. Some are missing foreheads, others are clipped below the chin. For example, the piece titled U-11 Ophelia crops from a bird’s-eye view a face turned upwards towards the sky, inspired by the theme of Ophelia's death, a subject obsessed over by the British painter John Everett Millais in his painting "Ophelia" submerged in water. Another, U-05, features the countenance of a youthful woman lost in infatuation, her face cropped; her gaze hazy, yet her mouth set in a resolute frown. Without further elaboration necessary, the posture of death, much like the state of life, imbues Jiang Cheng’s collection of large-scale oil paintings with profound emotions.

Jiang Cheng has collectively named this group of works the "U" series, signifying an abbreviation for the English word "YOU." "Who are you?" Setting aside the fact that this is a question worthy of an extensive existential dissertation, Jiang Cheng's response is a direct engagement with the act of painting. "U is my object, my counterpart, my actual situation; U is everything that I confront." Utilizing painting as a medium, through the application and manipulation of brush and pigment on canvas, a painter completes a work, a routine both in terms of daily practice and laborious process. 

In Jiang Cheng's practice, this process is elevated to an engagement whereby the artist personally confronts and counters the inertia of art history and its current state through resistance and struggle. This undoubtedly represents a grand artistic ambition, vexing generations of artists for whom painting serves as a visceral and intellectual battleground, a historical conduit through which artists have engaged both physically and mentally.

As the term "painting" simultaneously describes both the act by the painter and the product of this act, whether for artists creating paintings, or for collectors, investors, and critics who view paintings as objects of desire, "my counterpart" represents an unending ultimate goal. The journey toward this goal intertwines intuition, will, poeticism, mystique, and scientific qualities. Echoing the words from Corinthians in the New Testament: "For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known." Thus, when the enigma in the mirror finally reveals itself, the reflection faced is one's own.

So, within the domain where Jiang Cheng ostensibly declares war, through the six works featured in this exhibition, into which trenches has he delved, and upon which heights has he stood? In U-05, the young subject displays a rather focused gaze that bypasses the direct glance of the viewer, turning instead towards a contrasting patch of dark blue in the lower right of the canvas. In U-21, the youthful gaze falls into a kind of vacant stare; although facing the audience directly, the asymmetry of the pupils undermines the rigidity of the face. The dense pupils contrast with the diluted watercolor hues of the rest of the face like pebbles thrown into water, creating ripples of uncertain direction on the canvas. In either case, Jiang Cheng's treatment of the canvas with smooth and rounded brushstrokes, the watercolor palette, and the preservation of negative space sculpt highlights on the faces of the depicted figures. These highlights are distributed across the cheeks, tip of the nose, and around the orbits of the eyes, giving them an appearance akin to images cropped from a commercial poster, owing to the lack of a definitive light source.

Indeed, they are not individuals from reality; they are rather like the fleeting particles and pixels of media and internet imagery. The brush in Jiang Cheng's hand resembles a camera zooming in relentlessly on faces within the frame, mercilessly cropping the images on the face. Here, Jiang Cheng picks up the scissors of the Belgian artist Luc Tuymans. He avoids the narrative of human compassion or malevolence that Tuymans conveyed through facial expressions, instead transplanting the image onto the philosophical discourse of painting concerning the states of being and the alienation of humanity. However, in the grand ambition of altering image inertia, at least within this exhibition, he does not yet possess sufficient persuasive power.

Perhaps the dimensions of the canvas serve as compensation for this deficiency. Based on our habitual visual perception of paintings as flat objects, when the scale of the canvas aligns with the density of content within the painting, our psychological acceptability tends not to experience abruptness. The larger the painting, the more there is to observe, and thus, we obtain a richer visual experience. Just as when we stand before Rembrandt's The Night Watch, measuring 363 cm in height and 437 cm in width, we are drawn into the intricate relational dynamics and the compelling gazes of the figures, entering the narrative of the painting, and becoming invisible participants within it. Although the painting flickers with glimmers of swords and daggers, it is ultimately a friendly encounter because, from the perspective of observational interpretation, we understand the symbols, metaphors, and even the mysteries within the painting, until modernism radically subverted the meticulous and elevated sublimity of classical painting.

Jiang Cheng expressed how the nearly unconscious painting actions of the American Abstract Expressionist Willem De Kooning inspired his own artistic creation, initiating a physical confrontation with the logic of painting. Mark Rothko explained his preference for large canvases by stating, "I paint large paintings because I want to be intimate with myself and with humanity." At this moment, when a nameless face appears before the audience, fragmented and commanding, the familiar becomes uncanny, and painting acquires an element of danger. According to the phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty, painting is always a tangible expression where the inner self intersects with the material outside; ultimately, everything is corporeal. "U" is merely a beginning in finding oneself.