“看嘛” (literally “what are you looking at?”) is a Tianjin vernacular term meaning “to raise eyebrows.” So, what are you looking at? What made you raise your eyebrows? In light of China’s contemporary development, what have I seen? What have you seen?

For more than a decade I’ve been working and living in Beijing, where I enjoyed hanging around with friends and eating delicious food. But wait a minute! There was something with eating nowadays. Milk is contaminated. Capsules are made from boots. Lean pork is from swine feeding on chemicals. Cooking oil is recycled from leftovers. Fruits and vegetables are grown with artificial plant hormones. We are in big troubles. By consuming food we are potentially spending our money to get sick. Consumer behaviors are becoming irrational. The overcrowededness of hospitals attests that China’s body is sick, to say the least. As you can see, the Chinese skin color is changing.

The Internet represents a human progress, providing a new channel of communication that may change human attitudes. Such a good thing, however, has quite stopped working in China, where online supervision, banning, and censorship is tough. While there may be some good reasons in China to control the purchase of houses, cars, as well as birth rates, what would justify the control of free speech? Along broad streets and small alleys in Beijing, all kinds of surveillance video cameras have been installed, a phenomenon unmatched except what happened in the UK. Would that do any good? We know the answer all too well.

I happened to hang around with friends at the hobbies market of flowers, caged birds, fishes, insects, and all kinds of pets and collectibles. There, I was surprised at my findings: flowers were grown with medicine, crickets liked feeding on meat, and fishes were raised with contraceptive pills. What’s wrong with these plants or animals? Or rather, what’s wrong with humans? How can we enjoy recreational activities like that? Is that really the right direction of “development”? We need to slow down.

No matter how you complain or raise your eyebrows, you must know where you are coming from, so that you fully digest the reason why you are feeling the way you are feeling. In China, you must adapt to its climate, endeavoring to understand many a mysterious Chinese characters, to enhance your digestive system, to form everyday habits nicely, to keep sleeping early and rising early, to use the Internet less and read more, to drive less and walk more…. Well, that is the way you can make yourself a good employer.

The show – namely “看嘛?” – mainly features paintings and installations, inspired by everyday scenes. What is the relationship between surveillance video cameras and the avowed notion of “they are supposed to do you good”? What is the theory behind the difference between fractured ceramics and wholesome ones? What is interesting about the crickets feeding on meat? What is the story about bandannas, apples, Chinese pears, and plant hormones? Why don’t the cucumber flowers wither after cucumbers are picked? These sorts of things I wanted to incorporate into my works.

The artistic ethos of Song Dynasty paintings is what I try to emulate. In these antique works, you gain the peace of mind. In contemporary art, we don’t necessarily have any innovation. It is through the antique methods that I have been trying to produce creative works. It’s all about handicraft, laboriously practiced, painstakingly finished. Painting in such a way is fatiguing to death; it doesn’t need a thinking mind (say, Marxism). All it entails is the efforts to paint realistically, like returning to the Song Dynasty.

Besides, I’m interested in the changing media of art. When you take a look at a work by an ancient artist – even a fragmented piece – you will find it breathtaking. Fine works do not need explanation, as I believe. Perhaps you doubt it. But I don’t. It takes time to work on a piece. Yes, I need to take my time. It is time to stop my narrative here. And let’s keep looking.   

LI Mingzhu
Xia Zhi (Arrival of Summer)
May 5, 2012
Cao Chang Di