Page 54 - Genius

Shi yong

lives and works in Shanghai, China

SEARCH THE ARTIST ONLINE www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/yourgallery/artist_profile/Shi+yong/35903.html

I've ver y fond of Western culture, love to read
Western classical literature, like many of Chinese
young people, and was curious about everything on
the Western. because of this, when I had a chance
to enter an art school, I took most of my time in
learning Western painting, even after graduation,
and the study has been persistent. From classical
to the abstract, in this great art world, I was like a
pleasant swimmer.
As a Chinese who like Western culture, I am very
fond of Chinese culture too, in particular China's
classical painting. There is a very famous saying about
painting and literary in ancient China, a poem should
be a painting, a painting should be a poem. Although
the greatest classical works were mainly painted by
those great professional painters, but many famous
scholars do painted a lot of great works too, this is a
unique phenomenon.
Ancient Chinese artists and writers jointly owned the
thought that poetry is the soul of painting. Artists in
ancient China love nature life, the way they created
portraying nature is very unique.
but due to China's strict ethical restrictions, these
ancient artists never put the nude women images in
their paintings. Until nowadays, naked girls as an art
theme could not be fully recognized. but I think that
this situation will change. In my works, I try to do two
things. First, I put those famous nude images from
Western classical painting in a traditional Chinese
painting environment.

U s i n g p a p e r a n d p i g m e n t s s p e c i a ll y m a d e f o r
Chinese painting to paint those famous nude images
in Western classical paintings, as well as painting
Chinese painting on canvas, technically is not a
particular difficulty, but a very pleasant challenge.
What really difficulty is the image adjustments for
two completely different artistic conception.
Tw o c o m p l e t e l y d i f f e r e n t c u l t u r e s y m b o l s s o
harmoniously fit together, it is ver y surprising,
although to me, these works with the nature of the
experiment, but the effect is beyond my imagination,
and even I have been deeply moved.

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