Ramona Hauscher Fine arts critic of American Society for the Advancement of Asian Art Studies
Journaliste en chef Wang Baosheng Photographe et reportage
Cai Ju explains the creative process to the artists and students who visited the exhibition
Clean out of Mud, Oil on canvas, 160×216cm, by Cai Ju
Humble Vally, Oil on canvas, 160×188cm, by Cai Ju
Blue Number 6, Oil on canvas, 150×208cm, by Cai Ju
Bathing Beauty, Oil on canvas, 150×180cm, by Cai Ju
Cai Ju, a famous oil painter and winner of “Pollock Artist”, the international gold medal on abstract painting, is introducing his works to the artists and students in the exhibition.
The Java Woman, Oil on canvas,65×75cm, by Cai Ju
Waves, Oil on canvas, 60×82cm, by Cai Ju
Heaven, Earth and Human, Oil on canvas, 120×190cm, by Cai Ju
Female Body, Oil on canvas, 65×110cm, by Cai Ju
Regardless of the pure abstract painting or the half abstract painting associated with the reality world, Cai Ju’s paintings afford much food for reflection. Very much like reading refined books, one can interpret emotional image of beauty from his paintings by one’s own eyes.
His painting oftentimes casts a shroud of enigmatic charm: it invites you to experience it lightly dancing touch tinged with subtle colors yet restrains its expressiveness dramatically. Light, space and motion, alternating now and then, discernible but indiscernible, changing but changeless, beget a misty vain of labyrinthine logic that goes beyond of the reality world. Though awakening a seemingly familiar ambience, yet it leads you to contemplate the unfathomable illusion in another seemingly strange world where you can never penetrate into its core.
His works Series of Landscapes and Series of Roaming Around Lotus Pond do not fall into either the narrative painting or the object painting; the world “series” in the title merely serves as a reminder of the seemingly familiar ambience. In the same series, there show visual images purely formed by colors, points, lines and planes; there also appear succinct symbols composed by the lines and colors abstracted from the representation. It breaks away from the hedge of form between abstraction and representation, emancipating the inner world from the shackle of the objective. Everything in the painting helps to express a seemingly familiar memory yet goes beyond merely recollection and imagination, engendering an extreme suspension in which the works are neither the representative of the subjective, nor the progenies of the objective yet; painting elements such as points, lines, planes and colors resembling music notes breed the nonrepresentational art that transcends life, radiant with pursuing spirit for freer life.
The abstract art fulfills artistic pursuit by its inherent expression and it does not involve any defined objective. It possesses perceivable means. In essence, the nature of beauty it struggle to unveil is cognate with the nature of freedom long pursued by human beings. It exposes the inner spirit and emotions by tangible and perceivable means correspondingly. It’s a formal aesthetics, and also an activity form of human being’s creativity and freedom based on social practice. It is not something isolated from the reality but the authentic works of human practice; therefore, it is tinged with humanity, or rather as what the British aesthetician Bell termed “Meaningful Forms”.
What marks the expressiveness of Cai Ju’s abstract paintings are the “Chinese elements” and “primitive beauty”.
The “Chinese elements” are not merely embodied in the subjects of his works taken from the traditional Chinese painting such as landscape, lotus and calligraphy; furthermore, they are more than the simple combination of the inkling, lines and flowing vitality of the traditional Chinese painting. What is most worthy of appreciation is that his works exhibit his personalized understanding of Chinese art philosophy. In his masterpieces of April Shower and Raindrops, Pattering the Remains of Lotus, he deftly employs the colors usually utilized by the impressionists; nevertheless, it is doubtlessly pure Chinese expression in which passion is unveiled and restrained. What is hidden in the joy of spring rain implies the unnoticeable awareness of apprehension and what is concealed the melancholy withered lotus indicates optimistic expectation; such Chinese artistic conceptions are thus displayed by the incomprehensible hues and intermittent lines wreathed by mist. In his pure abstract painting Blue Number 6, Not Long and Morning of the Universe, he well reveals the simplicity, artlessness, chaos, as well as the indescribable loftiness and grandness of primitive beauty. Light, nothingness and unceasing motion feature the subject of his painting. It goes away from the reality world, yet it gets closer with nature as well as the idea that the endlessly moving air constitutes the boundless nothingness of universe. The rhythmic forms of nothingness and existence, motionlessness and motion well intertwine each painting element into an organic and new whole and associate the visual images with views. On the whole, Cai Ju’s works are ample in form, pregnant in content, fully accommodating the merits of the eastern and western perspectives.
Ramona Hauscher Fine arts critic
American Society for the Advancement of Asian Art Studies
New York April 20, 2006
(Web edito :Zhao Jianhua)
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