< back

Who's seen the dragon?
Reflections on the work of Bingyi Huang

Lorenzo Marsili

For a more extensive gallery of images, visit www.bingyi.info

Bingyi Huang's presentation of her own work is thoroughly philosophical, and it is not uncommon to find her paintings preceded by conceptually charged questions such as the one accompanying the Shanhaijing series: “Is it still possible to treat a primary text such as Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet with the same intellectual consideration as contemporary Journalism?” However, in stark contrast with the majority of contemporary production, the strong conceptual aura that surrounds the self-consciousness of Bingyi’s own work finds its glorification in the medium of paint, escaping any minimalist or formalist temptations. Her work is deeply expressive, although the expression itself remains hidden from view, shy to appear, it is woven into the compositional structure of the painting rather then thrown in the face of the spectator.

What is more, an interesting struggle between the brushwork and the compositional structure, on one side, and Bingyi’s own conceptual interpretation, on the other, can be located. At times, the arrangement of the figures on the canvas fully escapes the possessive grab of Bingyi-the-artist, addressing concerns that forcefully demand attention in the depths of the artist’s consciousness.

Consider Romeo and Juliet; a merely suggested Juliet, her clothes disappearing within the chaotic flowers in the background, only one eye visible, but shut, the mouth out of sight, the hair melting with the trees’ branches; the figure retreats, it refuses contact, it feels and is isolated, tears from the eye seem brushed out by caprice. And Romeo? All that one can see is spiritual wind, insubstantial, without form, creating a chaotic field of force sketched in cold colours.
The painting is dominated by the green background and flowers spiralling like drunken fireworks. At the very top the composition is closed off by a cloudy stretch of hope, that, together with the space below Juliet – a dark mystery, an endless fall –, frames and isolates the feebly existing female protagonist in an uncanny realm that is all her own.

Interestingly, Bingyi predicts this when she asks: “Hence the question becomes: what provokes the mind’s eye? The intellectual interpretation or the emotional content of the paintings?”

A great sense of intimacy stems instead from a’s world and b’s world, part of a series analysing human relationship; in the midst of a boundless sky, with two airplanes crossing in opposite direction in the distance, and a giant water tap dropping oversized water balloons onto a fictitious ground, stands a floating armchair, barely sketched, not bigger then one of the drops of water, and in the chair, cuddling, not two figures, but again, two forces, a splash of red and a splash of blue, crying tenderness in their insubstantiality. Once more, the figures are entirely detached from their surroundings; not only is the floating chair physically lost in the enormous empty background, but the surreality of the composition, with its enormous drooling water pipe, further alienates any human elements in the canvas. If this were not enough, a symbiosis of a halo enshrines the embracing couple. In its diversity, it recalls Romeo and Juliet. Not any longer a single individual against an all encompassing alien other, but an alliance of two, once again facing the bondless absurdity of reality.

It does not therefore come as a surprise that the series entitled Monologue opens with the following question: “Are we all fundamentally alienated?”. The technique of showing isolation through absence and detachment is here brought to its extreme in the painting entitled Soldier, where only a tree, a few branches, and what looks like a bullet in a wall are represented. Was the soldier hiding behind the tree, and is now fallen to our feet leaving the emblem of his wound? Or perhaps in the madness of war, the soldier, become a mere unit, is no longer even perceived as a breathing creature?

It is then easy to mark the leap to one of Bingyi’s most interesting series, Revolution and Disaster, dedicated to the political tension and ideological conflict of the contemporary area. The paintings composing this series possibly represent the highest technical achievement of Bingyi’s oeuvre. The isolation, solitude, helplessness, vague absurdity, which characterise the more intimate paintings discussed above, achieve here a metaphysical dimension. No longer Juliet or the embracing couple against the overwhelming exteriority, but a whole army of men (The Hero), climbing a snowy peak and acclaiming their waving leader, seeming to be fighting – physically, directly, for the mountain seems enveloped in a snow storm, the hardship can be clearly imaged –against the Goliath of reality.


Or instead, in works such as Truck to the train, the intimate dimension of a few figures joining forces remains, but is placed in direct contrast with an exteriority that is not merely indifferent, or other, but actively threatening. A few sparse human shapes run through a blooded field, while the nearby train explodes in a masterly painted cloud of red.

Bingyi’s oeuvre truly questions our position in the world and our relation to lived experience. The sense that stems from her work is one of inevitable isolation, alleviated solely by the warmth of companionship. The struggle seems endemic, the outside frightening. What is the just reaction to the times? Fight? Flight? Or perhaps, whatever we do, we will just keep on adding meaningless leaves to that autumnal monument to the indifference of life that is Bingyi’s Temple of Life.

< back