Contemplation

　　Zhao Li

　　Peng Xiaojia’s works have a “contemplative” quality.

　　They are not the narration of the real life or the transferred depiction of the natural landscape. As a result, the daily life experience and the conventional esthetic experience is not enough for the audiences to understand Peng’s works.

　　Born in the 1950s, Peng Xiaojia is now undoubtedly in the team of “old revolutionaries” in Chinese modern art. Compared with artists born in the 1960s, Peng Xiaojia and his peers are more “persisting” and “persevering”; and in terms of the personal resume, Peng seems to have a more complicated background than other artists of the 1950s, including the shift from a worker at Shanghai Technology Factory of Fine Arts to student at the most famous art institute in China in the 70s, from an emerging Chinese artist to an overseas art student in the US in the 80s, from a non-tiring overseas student to a renowned artist in the US art field in the 90s; the individual choice by an artist in the contemporary transition of national culture from enclosure to openness and the revaluation and re-selection of the artist in the Western cultural context. The case of Peng Xiaojia also has its significance in reflecting the persistence and perseverance of artists in a complicated situation, on the basis of which developed the unique quality of his works.

　　Indeed, Peng Xiaojia’s works have a contemplative quality.

　　As pointed out by some critics, “From some of Peng’s works can be seen the elements of a Western master”, which is an obvious fact. However, behind this obvious fact is an even more obvious one: the bold introduction and active absorption of modern Western art in China since the reform and opening. For Peng Xiaojia alone, maybe this process of learning from modern Western art is even longer, as is the same with other Chinese painters in the US—“Once located in the realistic context of Western art, you will get a completely different understanding of the modern Western art from the conclusion you may otherwise get from the limited library materials and translations at home. And this is precisely why wee must restart from the very beginning.”

　　This restart seems to have endowed Peng Xiaojia with a deeper understanding of the modern Western art; and through the historical study of modern Western art, artists necessarily have a different understanding, which is basically composed of two different standing points of thinking: the identity of an Eastern person and the identity of an Eastern person in the West. For Peng Xiaojia, who is not a cultural scholar, the more important is to implement these arrived summaries in his works.

　　From the 1990s, Peng Xiaojia aroused universal attention among the public. His works at this stage strived to disengage from the restrictions by modern Western masters and evolve through individual “contemplation”. Fence and Wall are both works in 1990. Their common ground also lies in that they both belong in the functional art. Specifically, Fence and Wall, while focusing on the vertical development, emphasize the orderly deployment in horizontal level, reflecting the favorable space consciousness of the artist, which is rare among then domestic artists. What’s more, Peng Xiaojia also introduces the “mutual insert” structuring method, segmenting wood blocks of varying sizes into the shape of “凹” and “凸” and then combining them together, reminding of the “Mortise-Tension Joint” in the traditional Chinese wooden structure, with a particular Oriental flavor. The artist also gives attention to the treatment of details: on the wooden surface, Peng intentionally leaves the obvious “oven cutting” trace. Such horizontal or vertical lines both are a record of the artist’s creation process and enhance the sense of quality, and hierarchy, emotion and tension of the object surface with the coarse and wild “line” marks with varying depths.

　　His works at the same time as or after Fence and Wall, such as Dice series, Book series and Wheels, though with more Chinese flavor, are more than the borrowing or transfer of cultural signs. The Dice series is a very meaningful and interesting series, which Peng Xiaojia is especially fond of. In his No. 1 work in this series introduced in 2001, Peng magnifies the die to a surprisingly abnormal degree such that it exceeds people’s daily experience of visual feeling. To strengthen this visual feeling, Peng also uses the embedding technique, using Joe wood for the main body of the Die and embedding red wood in the die as the points. In addition, the artist adopts a unique lying method for the die, inserting it slantways on a cowhide base. This inclined deployment reminds people of ancient Chinese living room, decoration-ware in the study, or the sculpture above chest of a sage in ancient Western temples. It seems that Peng intends to overthrow the normal life and esthetic experience in an intentionally “superhuman” posture, inspiring the audience to free from the conventional culture and practice to experience the art, stimulate the desire for free, fresh and brand-new experiences, and properly perceive the real changes of life and time. His No. 3 and No. 4 works in the Dice series created in 2003 can be regarded as the variants of the No. 1 work and a certain natural extension of his creation. From these works, Peng’s interest in trying different materials becomes obvious: No. 3 is of bronze and No. 4 is again of wood, with the base made also of wood.

　　Work No. 5 in the Dice series in 2007 differs quite a lot from the previous works of the same series in that it is no longer a single-ware but a combination, thus forming a complicated visual structure, and by creating a special atmosphere, emphasizes the ceremonial, or even ridiculous, feeling of the space. As a matter of fact, No. 5 of the Dice series is logically related to the previous Book series or the work of Wheel. In Book series and Wheel, Peng seems to aggrandize the similar artistic tension in a way of joking, thereby increasing the humorous flavor and the cultural pertinence of the work.

　　The contemplation on the space has undoubtedly catalyzed the positive creation passion of Peng Xiaojia. For the artist, the favorable conditions of the indoor exhibition hall become a restraint of creation freedom. Though Peng frequently attends various artistic group exhibitions and joint exhibitions, which mostly rely upon the intrinsic space of the art museum, Peng seems to give preference to the creation and exhibition of his works outdoors or even in the natural environment—this, in turn, requires the deep contemplation of the artist on his creation and a wider imagination of the space. Reluctant to intentionally manipulate or create the tension between his work and the environment, Peng adopts instead a mild strategy for mutual harmony. This resembles to a considerable degree the classical thinking tradition in China. Peng even emphasizes the novel relationship of infinite approaching and mutual infiltration between his work and the environment, which makes his work overly low-profile and conserved. However, if we say that Peng is an “environmental protectionist” in handling “external relationship” (between works and environment), then he is more a “structuralist” in handling the “internal relationship” (of the intrinsic structure of his works). With his focus on structure, Peng utilizes the particular relationship between various elements to form the structure of his works; with his attention to relationship, Peng strives to express the formal difference through the relationship between elements; and he seems to have grasped the essence: which is, any kind of complexity is the result of gradual accumulation of the simplest differences; and similarly, any kind of complexity can be finally resolved into such differences. From this perspective, the works of Peng Xiaojia are the interpretation of this simple and plain dialectic.

　　And in terms of material, besides metal and china clay, Peng persistently and perseveringly expresses his preferences on wood, which is therefore used in most of his works. As a graduate from the Department of Sculpture, Central Institute of Art, in the 1980s, Peng Xiaojia has been influenced by the traditional focus on wooden sculpture in the teaching of the institute. Besides the tri-dimensional works with abstract structure, human figure wooden sculpture is also an integral part of Peng’s creations. His Se7en in 2007 is the best proof. With obvious difference from his earlier figure works, Se7en is no longer a structural or symbolic expression but returns to a plain starting point. The healthy and plump female body, in simple and brief technique, with color painting, embodies the in-depth observation and precise expression of Peng Xiaojia and the supreme and rich spiritual temperament of the artist after contemplation. However, these may only fall short of superficial expressions. Naming his work Se7en, Peng Xiaojia uses different figures to refer to gluttony, lust, wrath, greed, pride… these ugly and obstinate human sins are expressed with an intention of profound emotions and humanity concern after ruthless condemnation.