"Close Encounters" He Jian solo exhibition

“...My initial human figure paintings were to transform contemporary popular images to
traditional scenes, or a kind of historical forgery of the ancient mural paintings. They not only express the mixed feelings of contemporary people, but also convey a certain sense of absurdity. Most of the original images were typical scenes of contemporary daily life, but when they hid behind the appearance of the dignified and old mural
paintings, the sense of absurdity turned into a sense of sadness. The artificially added dirt, water stains, specks, and the mottled and incomplete texture due to weathering happen to coincide with contemporary people’s sense of loss or a certain inexplicable emotion due to the transformation of cultural psychology. Later, I tried to apply the
rhetoric of “distressing/artificially aging” to non-human subjects, for example to historical objects that bear memories and a sense of loss. After that, I slowly tried to apply it to different scenes. The scenes are usually human spaces, so even though the human figures are not present in the scene, the relationship between people, objects, and the scene is still the focus of my pictorial exploration. As for the so-called “human space,”
I mostly focus on scenes related to historical memory, political power, or individual
existence. When these scenes are shrouded by the fog of time, the viewer begins to
explore the deeper meanings underneath the aesthetic surface, and try to listen to its narratives and reflections on that historical period through the seemingly calm and
ordinary appearance...” He Jian