Recent works by Yuan Wen are primarily about moments that are seen instantly rather than those that are fixed. He layers different moments like slices into his works, creating interfaces that embody the present tense. At the same time, based on existing objects, through the juxtaposition of realism and experimentalism, he creates a space-time that seems devoid of human traces, yet can evoke people's attention to the new value generated in its composition, highlighting its relevant interfaces and new artistic semantics.

Yuanwen's paintings present a blend of aesthetic appearances. Firstly, blended aesthetics emphasize the layering of colors and images, the coexistence of the banal and the classic, aiming to create a coexistence of art and nature. Yuanwen similarly strives to seek the coexistence of art and nature; the blended concept in his works reveals the complex tension between the concrete and the abstract, material and spiritual, historical and contemporary. His creations often unfold across dimensions such as reality and history, focusing on the fit between the new and old objects and rhetorical languages in nature, continuously searching for the truth of the world from the depth of field. The arrangement of different materials on the canvas and their natural growth also impact the generation of certain values, allowing seemingly contradictory elements to merge, thus achieving a plural coexistence of spiritual space on the canvas. In this regard, Yuanwen transforms all the nature within the canvas into a carrier of artistic creation, activating the absurdity of thought and highlighting the aesthetic perception of blending. At the same time, his painting subjects and techniques demonstrate the creator's ability to expand the boundaries of artistic creation, reaching the collision between heart and object in the space between the real and the illusory. Through multiple references, the canvas presents an intellectually reasonable structure of natural growth, further interpreting the essence of life as chaos and limiting the chaos of life within a rationally intervenable range. Yuanwen's artistic experiments reflect a more diverse set of clues, including the alienation of the sculptural entity and greater mutual penetration across dimensions such as reality and history. In my view, the original intention should be to select and extract from the dissected objects, giving birth to new artistic semantics by highlighting subjective value. From a technical perspective, the creation of a scene relies on the superposition of illusions; on one hand, it is a reproduction of nightmarishly real experiences; on the other, it is a discovery of hazy time and space. Therefore, Yuanwen's works often reflect that the purpose of object manifestation is to reveal the subject, and the meaning of mutual visibility often occurs. Habits and experiences in artistic creation can become obstacles to artistic development. Yuanwen often expresses the reproduction of cultural memory using extraordinary artistic language, endowing works with allegorical colors and completely blending the coexistence of figurative and abstract languages.

However, in the continuous process of capturing and creating, the roles of intuition, perception, and memory form visual images dominated by the creator, yet their physical sensations and states are real. In this regard, he has keenly realized the essential nature of life contained in the everyday, continually attempting to reveal the heterogeneity encoded within it, resulting in unique textures of reality and images in his works. Although painting cannot evade the information provided to the viewer by technology, another kind of internal reality requires constant self-reflection and introspection.

The images of technology that are constantly hidden can overlap or create distance. His numerous works store kinetic energy in their stillness, allowing ordinary things to release their spiritual charm and restoring the divinity of nature, returning to the essence of the human heart. He even attempts to position this in contrast with its counterpart, where these variations encompass increasingly complex individual experiences, striving to discover a serene semantic expression in a noisy world. The interweaving of these realities and illusions is both simple and powerful, completing the excavation of the times through more subtle and imaginative means. Of course, his sensitivity to language and his yearning for the bizarre form a fable-like spiritual reality.

Yuanwen's paintings continuously create surprises and even misunderstandings. Through a reconfiguration of reality, he explores the state of human existence in contemporary society. The seemingly absurd natural growth reflects a certain questioning of human thought processes, confronting viewers with the truth of the existence of nature and humanity. While the scenes are filled with a sense of unrestricted familiarity, they are also mixed with more unfamiliar elements. However, the essence of art lies in the sensitive capture and expression of the unfamiliar. Thus, it leads to a reconstruction of his spiritual landscape.

April 22, 2024, in Hangzhou

Similarity and difference —Five People Painting Art Research Exhibition · Shenzhen Station

SIMILARITIES & DIFFERENCES

RESEARCH EXHIBITION OF PAINTING ART BY FIVE ARTISTS·SHENZHEN

Exhibition Hours

June 27, 2025 - August 17, 2025

Exhibition Venue

Exhibition Hall 3-8, Second Floor, Dafen Art Museum, Longgang District, Shenzhen

Exhibition Halls 3-8, 2nd Floor, Dafen Art Museum, Longgang District, Shenzhen