Han Xucheng is my fellow countryman.In his childhood, he was
doing paintings together with Fang Lijun and Zhang Linhai. Later they applied
for the Academy of Fine Arts together. Although not accepted as expected,
HanXucheng did not give up painting. Until today, for several decades, he has
been painting earnestly and assiduously. Because of painting, his life became so hard that his wife left him
leaving with him a one year old boy and a four year old girl.
What moved me the most is
the fact that more than a decade has passed since then, he has brought up the
two children all alone after innumerable hardships. At the same time he has
never interrupted his painting. He is simple, kind and hardworking, exactly like
the land and the Chinese cabbage from the north. He grew up in the countryside,
naturally close to the northern land and cabbage. Maybe this is why his art
began with the Chinese cabbage.
Xucheng Han |《NO.8》|
160x140cm | Oil painting | 2012
It was ten years ago that Han Xucheng began
painting “cabbage”. At that moment，Han
Xucheng was living in Shangyuan village 40 kilometers north to Beijing. His
workshop and his living quarter belonged to a peasant. He had a large
courtyard, and he is the kind who always keeps himself busy. Therefore apart
from painting and taking care of children, he grew various kinds of vegetables
including kidney beans，radish,
eggplant, tomato and certainly “Chinese cabbage”.
His early cabbage painting was the fresh green
cabbage from his courtyard land. It was like a big life painting. Later the deep green leaves of the cabbage filled
the whole painting. Every detail of the cabbage leaf was portrayed in a direct
and pure manner. It was exactly the too luxuriant and thriving green which
made the cabbage in the painting break away from the life like feeling. Just imagine a huge cabbage in one square metre
and moreover it is a detail of the cabbage and so green, how false! However
it was perhaps at this very moment that he touched art itself. He painted the
cabbage in his mind – that world which changed the real cabbage into a kind of
plastic cabbage which is more true in itself , closer to the reality. The
reality is that the world is moving further and further away from nature.
Xucheng Han |《NO.2》|
150x120cm | Oil painting | 2014
Having moved to Xiaopu Songzhuang, Han Xucheng’s “cabbage”
“changed in nature”—— from “fresh” to “dried”. If you visited him at his
workshop at this time, you could see that his windowsill was filled with
withered cabbages. For many years thereafter，he
immersed himself silently in the depiction of the shrivelled cabbages searching
hardly for his feeling.
Xucheng Han |《NO.39》|
260x900cm | Oil painting | 2011
Several years later, his “cabbage” underwent
another “qualitative change”——from“withered”to“rotten”.At first it looked still like rotten
cabbages，then it looked more and more like
animal viscera, like endlessly flooding flesh lust. As a result it looked
simply as if it had nothing more to do with the “cabbage”. Indeed, the general
appearance of the painting had nothing to do with “cabbage”. However，Han Xucheng experienced and expressed his personal
feeling of the changing world and society through the process of the cabbage
changing from “fresh” to “withered” and “rotten”.
Xucheng Han |《NO.26》|
160x140cm | Oil painting | 2006
In other words, in the rapid process of world
economic globalization, the culture falling into bits and pieces, the general
loss of belief led China into an abnormal society of consumption. The world is dominated by materialism and lust，the bright colour can hardly conceal the wide gap
between the rich and the poor, the slogan of harmony can hardly gloss over the
fierce social contradiction. The flower blossoms on the surface covering up” rotten”
reality brings so much bewilderment, anger and helplessness to Han Xucheng and
every sensitive artist that Han Xucheng and all sensitive artists cannot fully
express their anger and helplessness without resorting to sick and disgusting
images.
Xucheng Han |《NO.1》|
1600x280cm | Oil painting | 2012
That is perhaps why there are “ugly” images in the
Chinese contemporary art. Compared with traditional art, contemporary art
stresses facing the sad life directly, keeping away whitewashing the reality.
Han Xucheng so directly and in such a large scale treat “chasing animals into
the water” as a big theme is a creation. The viscera pouring out like magma is
like flowing lust，greasy, sticky
and glutinous, mashed and full to the brim, it is a visual attack。
Xucheng Han |《NO.6》|
150x120cm | Oil painting | 2011
In recent years, Han Xucheng has been trying to
depict the festering viscera as precious stones. “Where it is ulcerating，it is as bright as peach and plums”.In fact，“festering”and“colourful” is simple. The difficult part is the right
balance between the contrasted feeling of blossom and the ulceration. If Han
Xucheng can better balance this, he can
further improve his art. Meanwhile, this balance is a deeper observation and experience
of the real reality。
Li
Xianting written on the Second Day of the Year of Tiger