About Zhou Shichao
Although he is a man of few words, Zhou Shichao is actually sharp-witted; otherwise, it is hard to imagine how he can always find the balance in contradictions. Whether on painting or on handling affairs, you will find that he is gifted in both aspects.
At first ,Speaking of Shichao’s paintings, they are still concrete on the surface, though his paintings are hazy and almost dream-like, you can still tell buildings, streets, churches, trees, vehicles and pedestrians on the paintings. However, it is obvious that Shichao does not take it as his purpose to paint these things; otherwise he definitely has the ability to portray them in a clearer way. In fact, Shichao just regards them as visual symbol of the painting, this is a special process and as a result connects two tendencies of being concrete and abstract at the same time, and realizes their coexistence.
Moreover, if being understood from the concept level, this process also hides a fine balance between tradition and modern. Not being synchronic or coincident, tradition and modern originally belong to the two nodes of time axis, with the modern coming after the tradition. In most cases, it is hard to combine them together. Impressionism is close to us, but as a kind of artistic phenomena, it actually had passed. The original intention of impressionism is to reappear the nature, which is quite different from the Shichao’s point of view. Although his drawing style is almost similar to impressionism, his purpose has changed from visual truth to the spiritual truth. The relationship between tradition and modern is like the boundless and finite universe that was described by Einstein, where fantasy from people is given free rein and seems like an endless expectation, but Shichao’s choice has the least risk.
As an oil painter, the basic structure of Shichao’s painting language is expressed in a western way. Although impressionism used to benefit from the oriental art in the course of its formation, it was still originated from the west. Shichao’s paintings have a scene full of oriental poetic and artistic conception, its emotional tendency is filled with Chinese poise and charm, and even his drawing style is almost close to wrinkling, rubbing, dotting and dyeing that all belonging to Chinese painting. Oil painting has been introduced into China for more than 100 years, but there has been a voice of nationalizing of oil painting. However, nationalization is a growing process in which the necessary life cycle cannot be shortened, no matter how highly it was expected. Culture is different from knowledge and technology, it cannot be copied and need very harsh ecological conditions. Shichao having conscious of this, he responds to the value expectation of a nation in his own way.
About handling affairs, Shichao is good at planning and management, being a painter and on the other hand being a planner. His pursuit of being a painter does not hinder his pursuit of treating irrelevant artists as objects of planning exhibitions. The exhibitions planned by Shichao are all fully appreciated by the same area and surely he is also successful in planning his own career. If what Shichao has done was measured in the context of post-modern, his rationality has already beyond the meaning of personal intelligence games. As a matter of fact, it is a social choice driven by the times behind it, and represents the trend of the times.
Coming back to Shichao, we can also discover his favor to the classic. Maybe it is a kind of misreading that the post-modern ignores the classic, while the classic is always the most charming part of the art history, and to the future, this situation should not be changed.
Du Dakai
June 18th, 2006
