Scarecrow Maze

Author: Li Yunfeng (Illustrator), Yin Longlong, et al.
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-03-01
Features: As the first work in China that combines poetry and painting in the realm of the supernatural, The Tower of Babel Totem opens the door to experiencing the mysterious; Scars Maze continues to adopt this unique "poetry and painting integration" form. The numerous heterogeneous beauties presented in the album are like the distant and mysterious glimmers of the polar regions, bringing readers enduring shock. The illustrations mostly feature new works by the young painter Li Yunfeng, and the beauty of the many heterogeneous spaces makes this new album highly valuable for appreciation and collection. The poets include not only Tu An, Shu Cai, Yin Longlong, Bai Lianchun, Jun'er, Li Yunfeng, Tian Le, and Meihualuo from the original team but also renowned poet Xi Chuan, folk singer and poet Zhou Yunpeng, and Changsong, Si Ru, and others who have joined as friends. The essence of poets from different generations, old, middle-aged, and young, represents the highest achievement of Chinese writing at present. In Scars Maze, in addition to black-and-white illustrations, a significant proportion are color works, including The Moonlight Lost in the Deep Roots of Trees, which has won multiple international awards. Compared to previous works, Li Yunfeng's new creations exhibit more heterogeneous isomorphism, the beauty of chaos coexisting, playful beauty, and mysterious beauty, taking the "black" of Chinese ink, the "red" and "blue" of Chinese pigments to an extreme. Li Yunfeng uses a lot of a vivid red, like the color of a naked woman whipped and contorted, and this vivid red is sometimes fragmented, like wisps, entwined, and fiery, as if born with an inherent defiance and disdain for traditional aesthetics. "Blue" is Li Yunfeng's eternal color. When moonlight fills the deep roots of trees, when an infant is gently cradled by the quiet forest, when snowflakes are faintly blue and drift in the air, the mysterious arrow also pierces people's confusion and delusion. Meanwhile, the "illness" that comes knocking at midnight, the "mask" with laughter, and the two-faced person with a large chin form our familiar yet strange eerie homeland. "Let wisdom become useful," in Scars Maze, Xi Chuan brings us Proverbs, undoubtedly representing the solemnity and contemplation of this era; "I don't want to expose my wounds and make the whole city know," Yin Longlong lives on Old Drum Tower Street, his magnanimity and ambition live in the sky; "The leaves are still green, everything is thriving, and people are still ants on the earth," Jun'er is closest to the sea, her peace and talent always remind one of the Nobel laureate Wis?awa Szymborska; "Spring blames a soulless person," Zhou Yunpeng, who has just released a new album, gazes at the monotonous nightlife of Beijing from Xiangshan; and then there are Tu An, Shu Cai, Bai Lianchun, Changsong, Si Ru, Meihualuo, and Tian Le, they are apostles who make "mirrors fall in love with flowers," and Scars Maze becomes even more harmonious and precious because of their participation. As a creator immersed in the depths of the soul, constantly seeking dialogue with the vast universe, young painter Li Yunfeng completed an important work in 1999—The Moonlight Lost in the Deep Roots of Trees. At that time, painters were agitated by the excitement of being paid to rush to exhibitions all over the country, selling their skills across the land. Li Yunfeng, however, secluded himself in a dark room, painting a series of works that were despised by temple art critics and disdainful of trend-following collectors. Li Yunfeng, who had long lived in the bustling city, had no material wealth to boast about and no association titles. All he did was deplete his inspiration and intellect, presenting us with a fantastical world that directly connects to the heart, and integrating Eastern and Western painting arts to form an extremely eerie and unique style. For some self-proclaimed art critics, in the face of Li Yunfeng's paintings, they are either speechless or timid. Because they have never seen such painting, they cannot even classify Li Yunfeng's works. What kind of "soul-transporting" heterogeneous space is this? "That day, time had stopped / Children no longer grew / Clothes slowly rose / Some black coats were already close to the sky / Blue began to fade like a dream / We could walk out of the room naked." These are Li Yunfeng's poems. In his Scars Maze, some lives are also stripped bare, searching for their spiritual homeland, their long fingers opening to the fresh wind, their bodies rising to the realm of the divine, the flowing water flowing toward the clouds, and the moonlight permeating the roots of the trees on the earth. The interaction reflects the painter's interconnection with existence. Through this new album, Li Yunfeng once again demonstrates his ability to construct a new painting language. Compared to previous works, Li Yunfeng's new creations exhibit more heterogeneous isomorphism, the beauty of chaos coexisting, playful beauty, and mysterious beauty, taking the "black" of Chinese ink, the "red" and "blue" of Chinese pigments to an extreme. Li Yunfeng uses a lot of a vivid red, like the color of a whipped and contorted naked woman, and this vivid red is sometimes fragmented, like wisps, entwined, fiery, as if born with an inherent defiance and disdain for traditional aesthetics. "Blue" is Li Yunfeng's eternal color. When moonlight fills the deep roots of trees, when an infant is gently cradled by the quiet forest, when snowflakes are faintly blue and drift in the air, the mysterious arrow also pierces people's confusion and delusion. At the same time, he combines some Western painting languages, such as decorative deformation, chiaroscuro in figure modeling, and the technique of texture processing in gray tones, while the overall connotation remains typical of Eastern temperament. His modern grasp of the moon and traditional eerie creatures, as well as the exploration of tree spirits and soul legends, draws on the line work of Chinese Buddhist painting and the large-scale black-and-white layout of Chinese painting. Between the seemingly simple black-and-white composition, what is enriched is the expression of human kindness and the multi-layered revelation of the dangers of the world. Li Yunfeng likes to use the ancient hue of "black" to create the narrative process of the subject in painting. The sky darkens, darkening to the point where the deep folds can be stroked. Li Yunfeng's paintings, like his poetry, slowly move, subtly drawing the time he is close to and the space that transcends the mundane. Sensitive poets realize that they are actually children who wander with the sun everywhere. On his paintings, floating are eyes quietly gazing, soft and stretched limbs. On the large-scale scenes, the cold and stern sky and earth show a cracked earth-like shell that can hatch life. The finely detailed, swaying, and still-growing curves are long cell tubes or roots. The calm horizontal lines create a sense of unease, while the twisting lines are interspersed with a joyful rhythm. Li Yunfeng's past life may have been a large tree, and in the new album, the trunk has countless incarnations. He likes to depict tree trunks with heads or fingers. And the moon in the night sky has also opened pure eyes, not the usual distant and estranged state of the human world, but instead greeting each other affectionately, exchanging emotions, and breathing each other's without malice. Only the large form of the nipple is also, allowing delicate root-like things to climb around it. Even the silhouette-like white human body is graceful, discarding the head full of meaningless and chaotic consciousness, and instead, a beautiful flower has bloomed at the head. This is the closest to the innocence of a child's heart, without the pretense of adulthood, the scene of meeting each other is to give you the most sincere flowers. Li Yunfeng's paintings and poetry share an undeniable element—sex, mother, and witch. "Some witches in white clothes drift along the water and become wives." The curves rising on the ground are nipples, and people often slowly rise between the earth. People grow, but what still supports them is the earth, that is the most primitive memory of humanity, the memory of the mother who created many lives. Many new-style art works also depict some strange scenes, but they leave people confused, because they are pale games, and Li Yunfeng did not participate in this meaningless so-called pure brushwork game or arbitrary deformation. His images come from reality, not entirely from dreams, yet they are strange, reflecting a humanistic concern, because his psychological basis remains a reflection of the objective, from the increasingly alienated mindset of all living beings. His works often reveal a sense of submersion and escape, just like this difficult-to-decipher title. After breaking through the threshold of time and space, the "maze" still remains elusive. A group of people appear, sitting on rooftops, climbing windows, standing at doorways, none of them speak, their mouths have disappeared, "confusion" should be the name of this group of people, as if each of them hopes to sink into a place where no one is, they can float at any time, they can transform into dreams at any time, they can hide in the roots of the tree where the moonlight fades, or even into the depths of the ground. Life in the world is not beautiful, often encountering mutual deception and strife, leaving wounds or scars, "leaving a withered body on the roadside to be claimed by strangers / while the mother walks behind us / puts all memories back into the uterus / leaving some dim memories, slowly drying in the broken moonlight." Li Yunfeng's paintings often feature broken walls, which negate closure, expressing the speculation after a nightmare. Between black and white, there is a desire to freely cross: the human body returns to the earth, to the uterus, and the earth also cracks, suggesting a certain fear. Even in sexual union, it feels like two strangers who have come together. Even when bodies intrude into each other, the result is only greater isolation, because the feeling of strangeness has never changed. When all humans are asleep, every tree in the jungle carefully extends its head near the roots to greet each other, quietly sharing their sorrows and their confusion about human chaos. "That day, we stood at the door all night / We told a tree everything," one stage of life is like a complex life adventure. Thus, his paintings often show water calling affectionately, the feeling of life in water is wonderful, tired, you can sink, warmer than the noisy city. Li Yunfeng does not feel despair, because his heart still holds expectations and speculations for the future, "That day, time had stopped / The sea drained in the distance, trees grew underground / Some people left the door and never returned / Some stood at the door / Waiting for a lifetime for once to open" (Complaint). He also kindly insists on his attitude toward life, with sunflowers or beautiful flowers on his head, walking toward the sunlit place, hoping to become the sun himself, illuminating whatever he sees. "We spent one night, passing through our lives," in the distant heterogeneous space, stands a vigilant soul, he is a young painter in the bustling city, and also a contemporary poet who can sink to contemplate life.