 rom 1999, painter Liang Weizhou who loves photography began his photographic series creation of “Scenery”. Compared with the restless emotions of anxiety, impulsion, contradiction and even neurosis expressed in his painting, photography seems to present another land of peace and tranquility in the depth of Liang Weizhou’s mind.
“Scenery” are black and white with subjective coloring, mainly divided into two parts: indoors and outdoors. The indoor is still life, and the outdoor is scene. The scope of still life is more extensive than usual, including objects laid for shooting and all the large or tiny things and traces indoors. The scene is to present some views of the quiet life outdoors and in the nature.
Liang Weizhou’s scenes are insipid and daily, without shocking plots or stories. “Scenery” could be paraphrased as the personal records of ordinary things in life, and those recorded scenes and images are marked with the nature of individual hobbies and collection. However, if we stay in this level, it seems only to observe the exterior, as the scenes and things of the Records don’t possess the special and mysterious significance in our daily sight.
As for the indoor part, those incandescent bulb, fluorescent light tube, electrical socket, half open door, ceiling fan, fruit, washstand, toilet, doll, and etc, those most ordinary things and corners are sublimated. They are forcefully stared at for a long time, therefore the sight line could even penetrate the things’ surface to the noumenon as substance. Obviously, the picture’s composition is delicately arranged, no matter in balance or out of balance, the purpose is to accentuate the photographed themes, to present the existed original status of indoor views. The works’ tone is quietly elegant with delicate levels, with things glittering with faint luster, having a strong sense of reality but seeming unreal at the same time. These photographs of scenes could easily remind me of some very alternative paintings of still lives before Liang Weizhou’s expressionistic style at the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s. Completely different from the mainstream painting of still life, the fruit, shell, fish and other still lives in his paintings were vividly presented however in a dim tone like lifeless and stale specimens. Anyway, those paintings of still lives seemed very unusual at that time, as they were real and unreal, directing people’s inherent acknowledgement of some objects to somewhere else. Recollecting those paintings of still lives and comparing them with these photographs of indoor objects, the continuance in spiritual sequence is quite obvious.
About his painting and photography, Liang Weizhou has mentioned in his notes, “Painting is part of my photography, and photography is the extension of my painting……”
Today’s “Scenery” could be regarded as the extension of Liang Weizhou’s alternative paintings of still lives in those years, in a large scope, from indoors to outdoors.
Outdoor scenes are surly wider, and the composition is stable with clear close, medium and distant views. There are meadow, water area, with fence and bridge nearby and horizon or sea horizon appearing in the distance; there are also people, ordinary people, ordinary behaviors, like a thoughtfully standing young man, the view of the backs of two women hurriedly pulling a child, a middle-aged man flying a kite, a lonely swimmer with head out of water…… Everything seems to be enveloped in a light gray tone of emptiness, and there are also some light yellow and variegated marks and shadows like an implication: that’s memory like dream, having really happened but feeling like airy hallucination. And the lonely people entertaining themselves and the view of backs of hurriedly leaving people are all familiar images and scenes in our mind and heart, which would naturally cause light melancholy, sadness, loneliness, tenderness and nostalgia in the audience’s heart.
Roland Barthes wrote in Camera Lucida that photography was like adventure, and a fascinating picture would cheer someone up from depressed loneliness, which was just the value of photography’s existence. I would like to take this as the starting point to interpret Liang Weizhou’s photographic series of “Scenery”.
Light
Plug
Bulb
Fan
Wine bottle
Door
Corner
Flowers in the corner
Daylight lamp
Image
Grapefruit
Stiff live on the paper
Clothes in the corner
Kate
Dongtan Bridge
Swimming
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