I LOVE YOU (A SET OF 65)

YE Yongqing

YE Yongqing graduated from the Oil Painting Department of the Sichuan Fine

Arts Institute in 1982; three years later he went through the baptismal trials of the '85 Movement in Chinese art; then, in 1986, he formed the Southwest Art Group with some of his artist friends, including Zhang Xiaogang, Zhou Chunya, Mao Xuhui, and Pan Dehai. The newly formed circle of artists focused on a new figural style that stressed intuitive feelings and underscored the importance of the value and experience of life. After twenty years of such experience and change, Ye became a dominating figure in the modern Chinese art world.

Even as other artists in Sichuan embraced the rise of realistic homegrown art and what was termed “scar art” in the early ‘80s, Ye sidestepped these movements and instead followed his own path by imitating techniques of the modernist artist Paul Cézanne and later the surrealists Giorgio de Chirico and Salvador Dalí. After encountering the art of these surrealists, Ye began using humor and dreams to express the meaning he found in his inner spirit rather than merely re-presenting objects of the outside world.

In 1987 Ye finished a number of ink washes, lacquer paintings, and woodblock prints, and his works at this time began to incorporate the “picture frame” structure into the works themselves. Within the context of this new structure, Ye achieved new breakthroughs in terms of materials (oil-paint propylene made into ink wash; canvas and many other types of paper) and mediums of painting (oil and Chinese painting, woodblock printing); his works no longer adhered to realistic or symbolic representation, and his use of colors, once moderate and weak, became bright and fresh.

1991 saw Ye begin his Big Character Poster installation, also known as his Big Poster series. All of our trivial daily matters are clipped and pasted into the series as Ye sees fit; thus we see newspapers, news clippings, bird cages, light bulbs, water piping, automobiles, old photographs, comics…. all coming together to form a collective diary for a special place in time.

In 1997, Ye chose to leave Chongqing owing to a physical condition and returned to his hometown, Kunming, where he inaugurated the Riverside Art Hall and the Art Center. This made Ye the first artist to organize, curate, and

operate his own art space, earning him the moniker the “Yunnan’s Captain of

Modern Art.”

I Love You was created over the course of 2004 to 2008 and is a combination of 65 separate pieces. It may be seen as a mishmash of smaller side projects and inspired sketches and studies that an artist plays around with while working on a much bigger project. They resemble an array of short quips, fragments, moods, and feelings—even more, they form a diary of moods, where each mood is seen and transcribed before they interact and coalesce to form a whole.

Lv Peng once gave his evaluation of Ye’s works as being charged with “poetic significance”: this poetic meaning is injected into the works where it merges with the images there created. In this series, Ye similarly uses “poetic significance” to interpret his work as “a scattered deck of poker cards.” In this respect Ye says, “While preparing the exhibition I saw some connections with neighboring works, but other than that, the smaller single works could all be combined into something new.”

The years from 2004 to 2008 were an important period for Ye Yongqing. In 2004 he retired several of his many personas—art gallery manager, curator, art space host—and he also ceased his frequent commute between Beijing and Kunming. During these years, he gave his heart back to the capital city, and went back to being a simple artist fully dedicated to creating art. It is no wonder that this became a high-point in his artistic success.

Ye’s high point in art was also a high point for his nation. During this period, Ye saw first hand the economic rise of both Beijing and the entire nation— Beijing had just recently won its bid for the 2008 Olympic games, public infrastructure was being improved or newly created, the nation was filled with the vibrancy of life, the burgeoning economy spurred increased growth of industry in China, and all of this further led to the rich growth of the art market.

Arrows, numbers, screens, circles, crosses, figurines, birds and their birdcages, dead leaves, fish, fruit, posts, and a number of other symbols



repeatedly appear within the space of his rectangular frames, filling them with

childlike fun and imagination—the love story of the older man for his Lolita, the exchange of keys to each others heart, and a rejected love letter. There are also the poker cards on which were ranked the enthusiastic and rising authorities from those years.

Owing to this unique historical backdrop, the series became an expression of the states and moods of the excitement, the happiness, the life, and light of the artist. It was an expression of the opened hearts and natures of that generation, it was a recording and venting of moods, and it was a testimonial—a summary—of that era. That is precisely why Ye chose to title this piece “I Love You.”

“My paintings from the 1990s showed some changes from my past works, with more use of a ‘scribbling’ style, a type of mood diary. It was a little like what we now call a blog. I wanted to distance myself from the ideological movements in China and instead pursued a freedom of expression that went beyond local symbols. Back then I spent most of my time traveling in Germany, New York, and other places.” (May 1995, The Mirror is Not a Stand: The

Conversations of Ye Shuai and Li Xianting)

Ye’s scribbling, casual style, as well as his bright, cheery use of color was

formed during this period in the 90s. He began to travel the world, seeing and experiencing new things in Germany, France, the UK; he began looking for ways to make new breakthroughs. Ye might have been called a “vacuum” for all the elements he sucked into his mind. This period allowed him to cut right into and honestly observe himself. His “Big Posters” and the heavy Chinese artistic and political symbols they incorporated were now something he avoided; he instead clung to an expressive style that was lighter, more focused on the self. This was when he took up the uninhibited scribbling and diary styles which he has since used in his works.

In many of the interviews Ye has given, he mentions the inspiration he

draws from Cy Twombly—an artist whom he greatly admires—which has influenced his own scribbling style and textual quality, his naiveté, and childish pleasure. Ye’s style and art are also in many ways a tribute to this

great Western master. He uses an impish freedom in the way he scribbles and

writes over the canvas, a more genuine and direct expression of concepts, and he mashes an assortment of material applications and expressive techniques together in his mind while remaining in full control of them all. He transcends culture and ethnicity, status, and location. Within the confines of history, time, and space, he found a harmonious world. Symbols and language that are often repeated in his works gradually came to form a distinct set of vocabulary; the different connections and reverbs between these vocabularies in turn led to a linguistic realm which metamorphosed into a wholly unique painting style and artistic language.

In the words of the artist himself, “A man’s life is limited; this is especially true in the face of time. History tells us that while human life is short, human art is immortal. When all is measured against time, art may be the only thing that can truly stand the test of time.”

Photo YE Yongqing and I Love You, Beijing, 2008 (Courtesy of F. Fine Gallery)