DSL Collection

A Walk in the World of Jia Aili - Karen Smith

"As an illustration of his point, he directs our attention to more new works, which follow the experimentation with crazed strokes witnessed on the ground floor. The pictorial forms are consistent with Jia Aili?s usual repertoire: a figure apparently walking across the picture plane carrying an unidentifiable object, through what seems to be a dumping ground piled high with abandoned electrical appliances. A second work gives greater clarity to the object held. It is revealed to be a tube television set, which the modern world is rapidly using liquid crystal technology to render obsolete. But why does he carry a television set specifically? ?Because I hate TV,? replies Jia Aili. ?Hate?because actually I love watching it! The problem is the power of its appeal, and the real damage that watching it inflicts upon the audience. It diminishes the ability to think, can totally control the mental state, and shape people?s attitudes.? He makes a second play of words here to illustrate the conundrum: this time he substitutes ??? in ??? (meaning entertainment with ??? meaning stupid (both pronounced yu).
All of this takes place in the middle of a muddy grey explosion of lacerating strokes zigzagging across the surface in disoriented fashion. Here, then are the machines to which he refers: the debris of the modern age. So-called high technology now abandoned to rust, useless, it?s working life spent.

In all three such works, the chalky opacity of lines completely alters the finished result. They look less like the style we associate with Jia Aili, and like that we recognised from Julian Schnabel. Certainly even does not have a texture quite like this. Even if it is not yet clear if ?new? is really good, the switch between style and texture definitely allows Jia Aili to test out boundaries and prevent himself from slipping into a rut.

?Painting doesn?t always satisfy me. I?m trying to find better ways to be clearer about what I seek to express. A lot happens in the process of painting that is impossible to predict. At times I deliberately try to produce a distinctly different style: styles that are so different the viewer might assume the paintings were created by different people. But that doesn?t mean I don?t make each work the best it can possibly be.?

A further attempt to be different involves the element of installation, as mentioned with the ?installation? painting. In the exhibition, keen to take greater control of the physical space in which the paintings would be displayed, Jia Aili adopted a different approach initially conceived to be a barrier erected between the viewer and the work, through which the audience would be forced to view the work, adjusting both the body and the eye in order to do so. Other thoughts flirted with graffiti, which Jia Aili compares favourably to contemporary painting?in terms of how much graffiti has struck him as representing true, heartfelt expression, not always apparent in art.

Just when we feel the tour is almost over, Jia Aili draws out other works, one being a beautiful water lily painting. ?Beautiful?? It?s not a word he deals in. ?I can?t say that I have ever seen ?beauty? in a pure and unadulterated form, but I do know what is not beautiful.?
Back down on the ground floor, his graduation works present themselves for attention. These are four tall, narrow panels that each portray a single figure in various postures and engaged in a range of puzzling activities. They are painted well, but are distinctly conservative as compared with the post-academy works. But still, looking back at these with fresh eyes, what amazing vision of the artist motivated the huge vast pile up of corpses that formed his main graduation composition. What was he thinking? It is still not finished and it is doubtful that it ever will be. But as the artist points out, quoting the essence of the Buddhist ideal that one should always hope to see a flower in bud not in full bloom, the crescent moon but not a full one, because there can be no greater comfort or joy in life than in the certain knowledge that the best is yet to come."