The 21st century, China has entered into a multi-cultural era. Chinese art have reflected a wide range of state from context, logic, form, performance, content and spirit, etc.
Femininity, Feminism, Women’s Day, and female artists as a special community have always been issues of worldwide interest.
Zhao Mengge spent her childhood in the rural countryside. Happy and carefree childhood memories sowed the seeds of freedom and love in her mind from very early time, which shaped her special feelings about the natural, the beauty and human and also has accumulated plenty of natural ingredients for her future art creation. In her art always has an attachment to the natural, just like a hermit’s endless yearning for mountains.
Although her parents do not understand art, but still fully support her frenzy pursuit of painting. Her father brought her go for teachers, from cultural center in city to Kai Feng where Department of Fine Arts in He nan University located and then went to Beijing-Central Academy of Fine Arts High School. In 1994, the year she admitted to the Central Academy of Fine Arts, her father had suddenly passed away. But her father’s love has always support her through every hurdle in her life.
Her systems, well-knit and normal study in the Central academy of Fine Arts High School and Central academy of Fine Arts set a good foundation for her future art creation. Her teachers like Liu Xiaodong, Hong Ling and Yuan Yunsheng etc. had influenced her varyingly. The predecessors like Lin Fengmian, Zhao Wuji and Wu Guanzhong etc. in the exploration of the Western art have also given her a lot of inspiration. She also exposed to the Western great masters’ artworks from prehistory to the Renaissance and then the impressionism to post-impressionism, from expressionism to all genres of contemporary arts. Van Gogh, Gauguin, Modigliani etc. are her affectionate masters (and the trip to Europe a few years later made her a fortunate chance to feel those masters’ original artworks. She can say those masters who lead and paved her way of art. The youth of her was rebellious and has been deeply impacted by those masters even the way of her life. She likes the Bohemian style of life, love is bread and art is the air. In her painting at the time the shape of the screen can be read in strong, bold colors, thick brush wild and her painting were full of lava-like passion. Painting was the release and vent to her at that time.
With the age growing and the experience of variety of emotions and life tempered, she began to really think about their own direction of development. According to her actual situation, she made a self-adjustment and appropriate choice which helped her found the possibilityof adversity, the direction and the steps; enhance the survival of her survival concept and social knowledge, rich her life experience, expand her cultural horizons and artistic patterns, stimulate and mobilize all aspects of her proficiency. As her interest in Chinese traditional culture more and more concentrated, she studied the ancient Chinese maters’ arts, especially Fan Kuan, Liang kai, Xu Wei, Chen Hongshou, Bada and Xugu’s artworks. In addition, the murals and sculpture from Sui, Tang, Wei and Jin Dynasty were also attracted her. She was reluctant to Italy, France, Spain, Germany and other countries’ masterpieces; more obsessed with the ancient masterworks of Tibet, xi’an, Yongle palace, DunHuang, Maijishan, Yungang etc. Her creations also from the early purely westen art language transformed to the East. China’s blood can not be changed after all. In short, Taoism, Buddhism and philosophy and metaphysics thinking have further strengthened the Eastern philosophizing and romance in her work . She talked to her heart through reading and meditation, accessed ideas from poetry, philosophy and history and she gets inspiration from film, dance and music. Beauvoir, Isadora·Duncan who are her ally, inspired her to become a strong, independent and accomplished woman. Experienced “on road”, she gradually learned how to deal with the challenges, to avoid risks, inspired her surprise and initiative her potential. The experiences and arts she made in this pried of time, benefit the development of her whole life, which also matured her art style.
Zhao Mengge’s artwork in recent years, <Fragrance> is a painting successfully expressed a calm state of woman, the scale was composited incompletely by looking down, emphasizing the flatness, the soft warm gray tone and add a dash chromic, brush spilled freely with hardness and softness lines. The characters, she mainly absorbed Tang dynasty woman and full of grace, which painted the composition of floating planes, as well as the amount of the Western sense of the body nude art, and create a unique female beauty. In the technique, the Orient and the West line of color and texture of a natural fit very characteristics; no loud colors, and only a mysterious, elegant, quiet and a little refreshing tone gray color. Posed picture of her in the realm of heaven, earth, human, naturally integrated to form a full of vitality, the infinite eternal ethereal world. Secular pressures of sex, real life and the difficult art of Chinese women artists to develop the force of "hermaphrodite" in the expression. She tried to seek to go beyond the structure of the real world system, reconstruct women and men, women and society, women and nature, women and the biology of the new "Harmony” relationship. I think this perhaps is the traditional Chinese contemporary art and the aesthetic of Zen overlapping meaning and value!
<Se Kong>series, the screen filled with a reason, determination and senseless beauty, the reaction is that she was feeling frustrated, depressed mood when the description of social reality reveals her sense of alienation, and between people Of alienation, sadness of human nature to draw, and finally, she uses art and creative thinking over the emotions, with a practice of Buddhist meditation posture to make their feelings calm down. She indulged in the expression of this woman's mental state: idle, meditation self healing…… She doesn’t want to cry anymore, just want to control, just want to create a open-minded, serene and deep world. This world maybe a little monotonous and lonely, but it have the mood and the philosophizing of Zen; has the free and easy of Zhulin celebrities of Wei and Jin dynasty. She is obsessed with this calm and enrich realm.
<Sumeru Spring> series is the use of eight forms of black and white screen synthesis works, she tries to abstract speculation traditional Oriental ink painting and modern Western expressionism, structuralism and painting materials, the combination of picture composition is bold and cutting, semi-abstract human body part only Large ink flowers and plantain, lotus leaf, set off a beautiful woman indifferent. Use “Sumeru spring” to break with the modern transformation period, the artists practice and the reality of life caused by the psychological uncertainty of the diaphragm and the highest level of metaphor in her heart the beauty of Oriental Zen.
"Red Dust-off” series, "To commemorate the forgotten”,” Music is no other intention”, "Blue” series, "Sumeru Spring " series and etc , are all can be said of her culmination at different stages.
In short, Confucianism, Buddhism, Zen, Taoism and other Chinese traditional culture is her ideological foundation; life is the main motive force and source of her art creation; Chinese contemporary are of great change is the blood and source of her sprite and her cultural believe. Her painting language has linked with the subject of contemporary culture, intentionally or unintentionally reveals the artist in contemporary society and cultural dislocation, the awkward space on the current state of mind and her living situation of a real reaction to and understanding of the spiritual world, Looks gloomy, chaotic things, in fact, filled with desire to protect artistic and artistic reality of the ideal practice dichotomy, let people see the possibility of Nirvana, and boundless vitality. This is precisely expression what she, as a Chinese cultural quality of contemporary independent artists, cultural values, cultural character and aesthetic of individuality.
In recent years, with the style of her work even more mature, successively participated in the National Art Exhibition (Awards nomination) and many influential international exhibition and solo exhibition, received extensive attention. Her art work began to be collected by famous collectors and collections such like, the president of Taiwan Gallery Association, famous collector, Mr. Xu Zhengfu; the President of Taiwan Qing Wan Gathering, Pan Wenhua; Ms. Wei xue(TCL, Li Dongsheng’s Wife); Ericsson, Sina, Luneng Group; Spain Manuel Arts Foundation, Today Art Museum, Huantie Times Art Museum, stars Art Museum, Imperial College Art Museum, Taiwan Guan Xiang Art Museum etc. Because of their support, she as a professional female artist in the spirit of thinking, creative freedom, while emancipating the mind and in social status also has been independent and self-development of space. I think she is a more explores in purely spiritual world, not exactly a “real world cultural ambassador”.
We hope this young female artist Ms. Zhao Mengge creates her own well beyond and privies works; to become one of the women self-conscious one of the outstanding representatives with her character of good thinking, self-esteem; and her spirit of the courage to pursue equality and happiness.
