artists > HEI Yang /zhao Ruanfan

In Hei Yang’s bird-people paintings, the parrots are not the chattering, happy creatures that we usually think of. They are ‘sullen, introverted and unwilling to speak’ states writer Yin Yan. He writes the artist uses this method of showing up the laughable as a way of recording his perception of living in society.

“Over-nourishment and over-stimulation are bound to produce mutation in form, hence the emergence in Hei Yang’s paintings of the odd mix of human and beast that is the bird-person, a kind of freakish child of these times and a representation through which the artist can give release to his thoughts and feelings. The bird- people stand to attention in their military caps and Mao suits, lacking any sense of being themselves.

Initially, the birds were painted with their eyes open exposing an emptiness behind their stare, but later the artist chose to simply paint them with their eyes shut, an expression of Hei Yang’s stance regarding present reality: when one finds one is unable to do anything for the world or change it in any way, choosing to close one’s eyes to it is not the worst option available. There is always a silent majority, unheard behind the empty clamor of public discourse. …. Keeping silent is a form of self-mockery but also in one sense a kind of quiet resistance, yet this apparent refusal to become involved is often the source of still greater tension.” (Yin Yan, The Bird-People Make a Mockery, Hei Yang Oil Paintings 2007)

Considered a pioneer of Chinese modernism, in the early 1980s Hei Yang was involved in the establishment of the China Association for Anonymous Painting, a group that wanted to establish its own identity, freedom of expression and challenge the artistic mainstream.

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