  he term ‘The Post-70’ Artists’ might be confusing to western audiences, perhaps because it refers to artists who were born after 1970, or perhaps because of the ambiguous concepts like ‘cruelty of youth', ‘cartoon generation', and ‘urban trends of the 90s'. From my point of view, the set of young Post-70 artists includes Chen Ke, Chou Xiaofei, Li Jikai, Xiong Yu, Ouyang Chun, (they are all approximately born after 1975, so the scope is even smaller). But they have already matured and developed their own style to the point that it is no longer so simple to describe each of their styles. Moreover, this group of young artists is like the youth of Chinese art history; they are currently creating a new generation of Chinese art history as well as writing a new chapter of contemporary art history. Wei Jia is undoubtedly a leading figure in this group of young artists. Although the art market may have considered this boldly spirited group ‘young', ‘cute', and ‘playful’ in the past, today, this group of artists has developed their own style. From the changes in Wei Jia’s recent works, you can see his progress, the development of the ‘Post-70 Artists’ and a more complete picture of China’s new generation of artists as individuals and as a group.
I first stepped into Wei Jia’s studio in the Fall of 2007. It was ten o’clock at night. Several graduate students from the Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts helped me get in touch with Wei Jia; Wei Jia is their hero. Several years ago, they said, every art students’ hero was Mao Yan, now, most students idolize Wei Jia. His newest works are placed around the studio. The one I like best is nearly 3m tall. It depicts a close-up of a lone owl standing on one side of the painting shown from behind so that it looks huge. In the center of the painting, there is a desolate landscape with only a telegraph pole that stands erect and stretches into the space. The other owl has crashed into the top of the pole; its body is tangled in the wires and several feathers have fallen. I stood there gazing at the painting for a long time. Did the lone owl indifferently watch the other owl crash into the telegraph pole, I wondered? Is the owl with  its back facing the audience crying? Or is the owl standing there watching himself in a past life?
I remember Zheng Naiming once wrote an essay on Wei Jia's earlier works. In one painting, he painted a chubby boy; yet, he portrayed the boy’s spirit as sensitive and penetrating. Mr. Zheng says that it is as if a thin boy’s soul lives inside the body of this chubby boy. What Mr. Zheng says is very true: Wei Jia's works always have an intense mix of contrasts. In his owl painting, perhaps Wei Jia wants to convey an even stronger emotion and state of being. On the one hand, he is grim, distant, almost cold to the point of terrifying. On the other hand, however, he may be hiding his emotions and within this subtlety, there is extreme warmth. On the canvas, Wei Jia illustrates the way these two extremes come together. He uses acrylic, yet frequently paints as if it were oil paint, accumulating layer upon layer so that the canvas is filled with tensile brushstrokes that appear totally random, but are actually carefully thought out.
Since the end of last year to the beginning of this year, the expression of contrasts in Wei Jia's works has become much more developed. In the past few years, his style has changed from being smooth or decorative to being subtler, his brushstrokes, however, have become even more richly expressive. In several paintings from his series ' Illuminating the Endless Night ' Wei Jia depicts hidden wisps of light within night's darkness that discreetly leak out of  the tent. Is the glimmer of light in the darkness the quickly fading light of a forlorn candle flame, or is the light a sliver of hope? Is this lone tent in the middle of the endless space a safe hiding place, or is it just a small sail that can be swallowed up into nothing at any time? Apart from his philosophy of combining contrasts, Wei Jia seems to endow each painting with a unique story. In 'Illuminating the Endless Night -Ⅲ', a young man stands with his back facing you in front of a tent, but there is only a portion of the man’s silhouette. It looks as if part of it has been torn off the surface, like a piece of time’s shadow, which also looks like a target. There are arrows on his back and faint bloodstains that have already dried. It reminds me of the Western paintings portraying the Christian martyr, St. Sebastian who was pierced by arrows. Wei Jia’s works also seem to convey each person’s intimate feelings. The figure of the young man’s back is very tranquil, but do the arrows in his back hurt? Or is this an act of atonement? Pay close attention to the upper left portion of the painting and note the traces of dripping paint. This dense and profuse dripping seems to represent the boy’s deepest concerns. ‘Yearning for Ease’ has its own story. What worries does this boy inside the tent have to reveal such a troubled and desolate expression in his eyes? The youth outside the tent has white hair, but perhaps, he has the soul of an old man underneath his youthful flesh. Wei Jia named it ‘Yearning for Ease.’ Perhaps this is the desire for calm within a restrained and ‘frenzied’ mentality.
Wei Jia’s paintings today are hard to classify as ‘cartoon generation’ or ‘the cruelty of youth.’
Wei Jia’s early paintings actually already reveal the artist’s fundamental sentiments. In ‘Beauty and Sadness are Insignificant’ a black-haired boy holds a bouquet of beautiful flowers in one hand, while the other hand scatters the petals, as if to say that the passage of youth is impossible to grasp. Zhu Qi’s critique raises a point that Wei Jia’s work has changed from ‘the cruelty of youth’ to ‘becoming void;’ in the void, you clear everything in order to search for oneself. I think that ‘searching for self-identity’ is a very important concept in the works of Wei Jia as well as his fellow artists. Looking at Wei Jia’s early to recent works is like seeing the evolution of his own life. From his comparatively lighter melancholy feelings to his more self-contained and intense sentiments, his dark-haired youths have turned into today’s white-haired youths. Wei Jia’s youth always have a pair of huge eyes, but if you compare them with his early works, the eyes of the youth in his recent works are filled with even more of life’s stories and experiences. The eyes of the youth in ‘Discover’ are filled with a curiosity for life—clear and shining bright. In ‘Who are you’, the youth has fallen on the muddy grass. His eyes are still clear, bright and shining, innocent and capricious, certainly less naïve than the youth in his earlier work, but he has undergone life’s vicissitudes and has become more mature.
His work essentially explores the individual’s life sentiments. He expresses the inability to grasp the passage of time and the nostalgia for youth and memory. This is not limited to Wei Jia’s work,  but can also be found in the works of Chen Ke, Li Jikai, Chou Xiaofei, and Xiong Yu. In Chen Ke’s work, the ‘lighter’ or more innocent mood of the ‘cute’ young girl turns into the face of one who is seeking to find oneself in time, such as by drawing traces of memories on old furniture. Chou Xiaofei’s work seems to express how reminiscing begins in your youth and how it is hard to let go of nostalgic memories of life’s pleasures. Xiong Yu’s work usually uses elements like ‘water,’ ‘smoke (vapor)’ and ‘light and shadow’— all of these elements are impermanent; they are a metaphor for the impossibility of grasping time. The titles they choose, furthermore, all have a kind of scholarly poetic meaning. Chen Ke’s ‘Waiting for a Flower to Blossom,’ ‘Dense Fog,’ ‘Dream;’ Chou Xiaofei’s ‘Leftover Fruit,’ (was changed to ‘Midsummer Fruit’); Wei Jia’s ‘Illuminating the Endless Night,’ ‘Yearning for Ease,’ and ‘Beauty and Sadness;’ Xiong Yu’s ‘Quiet Passage—’ all of them express a nostalgia and wistfulness for life and time.
Perhaps it is their common background that has made ‘the latter half of the post 70’ artists use identical elements in their work. Firstly, they are the only child for the most part—moreover, they are the ‘first generation’ of the one child family. With both parents working, they were often alone and grew up in their own world, which made them  different from past generations of ‘company and friends.’ Therefore, the paintings deal mostly with the individual and not the group. Secondly, the changes in Chinese society have been too vast; so many concrete things are in the process of being torn down and rebuilt so that the facade has changed entirely. The past was disturbing and the future is uncertain; perhaps, the events in your own memory are the only reality. They have already broken away from Chinese art of the past, which used a clear and straightforward way to express these kinds of changes; now, they use metaphors as a way to bring this to light. Thirdly, the experience of moving. In the process of moving (for education or for settling down. The majority of them moved to Beijing), they were forced to spend more time alone dealing with themselves. Fourth, after living a materialistic life, they sought spiritual refinement. Many people have remarked that this generation of artists have been influenced by the consumer trends of the 1990s. I believe that the style of this generation of artists is related to the improvement of the consumer culture of the 1990s, but this does not mean that their works are ‘trendy’ or ‘consumer-oriented,’ nor are they like political pop or ‘consumer pop,’ depicting consumer icons or recreating trendy designer styles. The development of consumer culture was not just about consumer goods. Following the improvements in consumer goods, they became even more concerned with raising the artistic level of their work. In terms of their thinking, they read profusely. Wei Jia’s bookcase is filled with the newest books and catalogues of European, American, and especially German artists that he buys from Amazon. ‘Newest’ means sensitivity to fineness. Chen Ke reads Haruki Murakami (not comic cartoons), which is why his works  are always tinged with melancholy. They also pay close attention to their tools; Wei Jia always insists on using the best canvas, paints, oils, brushes, so that the surface of his paintings seems to give off a thin layer of light. This effect has been extremely difficult to bring out in prints of his work.
In contemporary Chinese art history, this generation that returned to the self is very important. It often feels as if contemporary Chinese history is a large rolling wheel and the development of art history is like the ever-changing shadows thrown off the light shining from the torch. Since the earliest recognizable start of contemporary Chinese art, it seems like it has been an evolution of icons: the icon of Chairman Mao and patriarchal authority changed into an icon of the masculine Heavenly Kings of the past, and has again changed into icons of consumer culture, which can be represented by the consumer icons created by artist Feng Zhengjie. Political power gives way to consumerism. Although it may not be politically correct to say this, the yang has given way to the yin; the icon has changed from masculine to feminine and the pupils go in opposite directions to portray a generation that has gotten lost in the material world and has ‘lost itself.’ Afterwards came the rise of countless flashy product logos, but there are few products that express the individual in mass production and they are attached to China’s great era of products. The ‘latter half of the Post 70’ artists are like a breath of fresh air in contemporary Chinese art history; they are like a peaceful revolution. Their work does not contain political or consumer icons; rather, they return to the fundamentals of art—the expression of the artist’s self,  soul and thoughts. Using Wei Jia’s work as an example, Zhu Qi points out that he makes his figures smaller, while magnifying the landscape, which is the same concept as Chinese scholar paintings. Their subject matter, furthermore, includes nostalgia for youth and the passage of time, the uncertainty of life, and subtle loneliness, which echoes the moods and musings of Chinese scholar culture.
Youthful China, youthful Wei Jia. In the past, Wei Jia and the artists of his generation were always looked upon as ‘the children’ of the Chinese art market. Today, they are the bold and spirited youth who have already brought in a new trend and have established a new era in contemporary Chinese art history through their exploration of their identity. The so-called cartoon generation of ‘post 70’ is quickly coming upon the artists of the 1980s. They are the true beginnings of the cartoon generation; having grown up with cartoons and comics since childhood, they have a deeper understanding of cartoons. As the wheel turns, what will the next generation be like? The generation post 90? The generation of online chatrooms? We have yet to know, but will have to wait and see.
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