 oday, we ought to interpret any case of contemporary art within a cultural context, or locate it in a linear development of art history so as to identify its nature and difference between this individual artist and the art world phenomenon. This is the foundation to understand contemporary art.
Departing from here, if we'd analysis the basic nature of young artists (the generation who were born after 1970s,) the best way would be investigating within the genealogy of art. If we compare the Star Group in the end of 1970s as the Beat Generation, or the Political Pop and Cynical Realism to Satire Generation, then, the group of artists in the 21st century (those who were born after 1970s) has now demonstrated themselves as The Ego Generation.
Within such a genealogy of contemporary art, if to compare to Star Group or Political Pop or Cynical Realism, the growth of The Ego Generation is fragmental in a leaping pace. They have bypassed Cartoon Generation and Cruelty Painting, now dash directly into inner world of their own. Let us take Li Jikai's painting for example. We can hardly find any inevitable links with his earlier generation or his own contemporaries in the term of rhetoric of his painting. If we take closer look at Li's painting, we could easily sense the status of spirit and mind of this young group, The Ego Generation, dominantly in the mood of lonesome, loneliness, being confused, autistic and egocentric. He as if withdraws from the turbulent outside world, becomes a spectator of life, observing this dynamic society indifferently. Perhaps he is fully aware of the difference between the realistic world and his heart and mind, he turns more to analysis and interpretation of the psychological world of himself. With a painterly linguistic way that is similar to the Surrealism, the personal inner world that he has painted is often odd, absurd, sad, distraught and impotent. Different from any other art movement, thus new tendency, with Li Jikai as one of the representatives, no longer pays much attention to the topic about the relationship between art and society or art and politics, but rather prefers to discover the sub-consciousness. This is all due to the declining of grandiose narration in the current social political context, which marks the termination of a time of collective unconsciousness, replaced by warm concern from the perspective of a family, its tenderness, and the cultural information and the visual images in a digital era. In order to avoid the over abundant persuasion in the level of micro-life and the suffocating air of over tenderness, he began to introspect the real me. Just as he wrote as monologue, "when I grew up, we mainly struggle to cope with life, accept arrangement, become who we are now……what I only know is that we seem to be not really the creator or participant of our own life, but rather, a spectator, dazed, isolated from the group, then, time passes by.' Seeing from Li Jikai's perspective, I becomes a tamed object, becomes an impotent idol. In fact, such attention to himself is not at all narcissism, but rather emphasizing the subjectivity about himself and the objective world.
Another apparent nature of Li Jikai's art is his focus on dreams. Because dreams are not reality, so it is sensational, surrealistic, and could be psychologically analyzed. Just because of the illusive nature of the realm of dreams, it allows the artist to juxtapose those illogical odd images and objects all together. He on purpose bounds objects to man, be it excreta, animal, aircraft, table, trash, toy bricks, boat, etc. This is what provocation and pursuit of dreams is within the absolute sub-consciousness. In Scrap Landfill, he depicts a lonely boy standing amongst the trash. The contrast between the small boy and the gigantic scrapheap is overwhelming. The little boy is emerged among the materials of stuff. While in his The Bones of a Giant, there are two little boys standing on the both end of a gigantic bones, a metaphor of life and death. These two images are completely illogical narration, just as a daydreaming. In his other paintings, such as We Want to Go Afar, A Start for the Sake of End, he extremely rationally situate the little boy who is either standing on top of a table or a mushroom back to reality, whispering his own pain and unspeakable secrete in his heart. With a natural and naive way, his painting is not at all pretentious. Li Jikai's art obtains both ideas of fantasy and direct way of expression. From this perspective, we can see the artist's imagination of himself. Such obsession of himself is based on an illogic, dramatic and absurd language, and full of fear, pain, and nostalgia. Through his painting, he doesn't try to pursue the absolute truth of Modernism, nor a cynical attitude of post-Modernism, but rather analyzing the meaning of the being of himself, an uncertain conflict between his heart and the outside world. In a certain sense, Li Jikai's art is a statement of the aesthetics of the Ego-generation of the post-'70s.
Same with other young artists, Li Jikai himself isn't much enthusiastic for social and political issues. However, it doesn't mean that profound meaning is absent in his art. He tries to propose a direction of his art based on fundamental questions such as "who am I? Where did I come from? Where will I go?" He is not a non-Idealist, but rather focus this I in his own childhood. He cherishes the nicest moment during the process when he grows up. This I has been depicted as a Peter Pan, someone who will never grow up. The heart and mind of a child hasn't had any negative influence. It is an infected memory. Nonetheless, such longing for the excellence doesn't mean to pursue of absolute perfection. It departed from the reality, touches the kind of mentality of disturbing moment, such as isolation, lonesome, impotence, injury, nervous, fear. If we take closer look at his paintings, A Clear out Day, Take-off? Get Ready!, The Period of Correction, Break the Wave, Injury, Height, etc., we will then immediately understand the connotations in his painting. To some extent, just because he visualizes his anxiety, panic, and melancholy of his mind, which becomes his introspection of his past, that is, pursuing the absence of the self through art. Such pursuit of one's self is the meaning of art. Therefore, if to compare with any other forms of art, what he has painted is very serious art.
In Li Jikai's work, we can neither see the cultural background nor historical traces of mankind. What we can see is his autobiographic imagination and formation of his own mentality. No matter in the sense of content or form, his work has been always connected to solitude and meditation. Different from those artists who are obsessed by imagery of violence, Li Jikai didn't take the realm of his dream world into a world with violence, but rather a world that was completely re-woven by Li Jikai himself. To him, painting is almost a spiritual therapy, observing the self. Through observation of images, through view of the images, imaginations related to man's experience are uplifted and inspired. In this way, one's soul would be re-constructed.
Li Jikai's attention to his self and expression of it forms the main characteristics of his work. His painting catches man's soul in a very accurate and yet rather exaggerated way, and so obviously that the memory of the artist's from his childhood is like watermark in his entire Meanwhile, it is also a little sentimental in his painting, which conveys how the artist sees the world and understand its value. His work seems to be always in a work-process, without much conclusion. His figures do not tempt to escape from reality but rather penetrating into one's soul, with silent narration. Nevertheless, how can he represent this self in his paintings? To me, it is rather superficial to categorizing Li Jikai's work into the genre of cartoon painting. His painting is strictly a simple transformation within academic style, applying in a large background some pure monochromic color in graffiti-style, his painting is much more profound than regular cartoon painting. What we should pay a bit more attention to is that Li Jikai tries to minimize the surface that the imagery of this I may take in the painting makes the imageries more subjective. He strengthens the meaning of such a big space by minimizing his figures. He often places a boy in an open space, which fosters a realm of dreamland. Meanwhile, his concise cartoon style brings sense of humor. On purpose, he enlarges the sense of big space which in contrast with the smallness of people and objects. He encloses himself into a tiny world of himself, and indulges. On the other hand, he is able to apply free lines to create a turbulent air in his work (such as in The End of World, Sleepwalking and Fireflies). Such painting is a bit squeamish and fairy-tale like, hence, surrealistic. His images indicated two layers of meanings: a metaphor of psychological realm in dream of oneself, and an allegory of the diminishing of depth of one's own. Nonetheless, while Li Jikai's paintings no longer mimic the grandiose narration of academic painting, he starts to raise another issue, who would be responsible for me? Such questioning again pulls back to the depth of mind of one's own. That is to say, the meaning of art dwells within form itself.
As a matter of fact, Li Jikai's art is not a sheer expression of the thus missing ego, but rather trying to find the meaning of this ego. He depicts not anxiety and uneasiness of his contemporaries; instead, he lucidly expresses his own meditation. His art inosculates with the major trend of the 21st century in the contemporary Chinese art, that is during the breakthrough from the mainstream ideology, collective awareness vanishes, and artists come back to individuals, and to introspect personal experience and value system from micro-perspective, which is, describe personal memory and circumstances with highly individualized artistic language. Sometimes Li Jikai's work are mild and gentle, sometimes are free and violent and sometimes juxtaposes motion and motionless. His painting combines objective painting and two dimensional decorative characteristics emphasis expressive brushstrokes and abstract language, and keep a very good balance between these two.
I'm quite moved by Li Jikai, an extremely gifted painter, how he analyses personal mentality, by exaggerating un-related imageries. The most identical image of Li Jikai could be the boy with pig's head, wearing all sorts of costumes. This adorable figure either stands on the top of gigantic mushrooms, or creeps or lies in a long wooden box. This figure has an animal look on his face, with the round eyes and a harelip. The anxious look is the fundamental nature of his work. It enchants the viewers, who are standing within the same lonesome background, attracted by them, and loving them.
"Clear-The Solo Exhibition of Li Jikai" opens at Beijing Today Art Museum from Jan.6 to 28th, 2008
Fire, Oil on Canvas, 145×100cm, 2007
Big Mammoth, Oil on Canvas, 200×300cm, 2007
peep through the soil, Oil on Canvas, 180×150cm, 2006
Skyline No.3, Oil on Canvas, 50×180cm, 2006
Black-Bolt, Oil on Canvas, 200x300cm, 2006
lyric, Oil on Canvas, 80×100cm, 2006
Reflect, Oil on Canvas, 100x80cm, 2006
Story be read, Oil on Canvas, 150×200cm, 2005
Rabbit and rabbit, Oil on Canvas, 170x140cm, 2004
Wait for time passing by, Oil on Canvas, 150×100cm
Invisible Scar No.1, Oil on Canvas, 150×100cm
We Want to Go A far, Oil on Canvas, 145×200cm
Pilot, Oil on Canvas, 200×150cm
Growth Time, Oil on Canvas, 145×185cm
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