Reborn as a great painter, with a system, you can be willful

Jiang Zhe has dozens of sketches and a collection of newspaper clippings spread out in his studio on the second floor. There are also some books open or with bookmarks on the workbench.

Immersed in his studies and creation, time passed quickly, and he began to prepare for the 2007 Kassel Documenta.

Participating in this exhibition is both a system requirement and his wish.

He pulled up a chair and sat down.

Looking at the materials he had collected, the long-term task of participating in the three major art exhibitions issued by the system had reached the closing stage. In order to get more rewards, he made sufficient preparations.

He referred to the materials and made three sets of creative plans.

The first group represents the city of the future.

The second group of works is directed towards analyzing the times, with an emphasis on realism.

The third group of options is rural life, based mainly on Miller's farm.

Among these drafts, there are Hudson, Wall Street, the glass curtain wall of Morgan Stanley Building, old buildings with old red brick exterior walls, white-collar workers, wandering artists, workers wearing helmets, farmers and people of all skin colors. The main elements are American. After all, coming to New York to study gives you a direct life experience.

These three sets of solutions have their own characteristics, making it difficult to choose and integrate them.

When making the choice, he recalled conversations he had with some people.

Professor Kerry and he analyzed the award-winning works of the Documenta over the years:

“Documenta is never Mount Olympus…curators are putting the Third World into the vacuum packaging of conceptual art.” Professor Kerry began to analyze postwar contemporary art from Documenta. His analysis is more academic.

Jiang Zhe then recalled what Mr. Walker of Christie's said at the reception yesterday about the premium rate of artists participating in the past three documentas in the auction market. The expert suggested using deconstructionism to reinterpret the urban metal aesthetics. To put it simply, it is best to not understand what you see or hear.

Jiang Zhe stood up and poured himself a glass of champagne.

He cleared away all the messy thoughts.

None of these suggestions apply to me.

The theme of this document exhibition is the fifth podium, and people have various interpretations and understandings of it.

Jiang Zhe has his own understanding.

He picked up a paintbrush and randomly drew some shapes on a blank piece of paper, trying to come up with a new plan.

There are some shapes in industrial ruins and some decorative elements.

The studio was silent, the only sound being the rustling sound of Jiang Zhe's brush moving across the paper.

The clock chimed twice. He made himself a cup of coffee and continued painting.

The buildings in Manhattan, the various shadows on the streets, the studios in the school, the tools in the studio, the display shelves in the store, all the familiar images, in various postures, gradually appeared on the paper.

Jiang Zhe's fingers were hovering over the yellowed Canson sketch paper, and the rustling sound of the pencil tip scratching across the rough paper suddenly stopped.

He thought of a way to balance the visual impact and humanistic height of his works, showing the diversity of New York life - contradictions and conflicts, modernity and backwardness, warmth and contradiction, wealth and poverty.

It should be okay to express the contradiction here myself, right?

With this idea in mind, it is difficult to suppress the urge to create.

He picked up the paintbrush again...

Columbia University Studio Art.

".We can't put contemporary art in the 'post-war revival' unit, that would create a dull structure," the arguing voices came through the glass windows and oak doors.

Four graduate students of art gathered around a workbench, having a heated discussion.

Many artists and people studying art want to participate in the Kassel Documenta. Some do it independently, while others collaborate with friends.

These students planned to collaborate to complete the project, but first they had to determine the general direction. Everyone involved in the collaboration came up with their own proposal.

Celia Watson plays with the commemorative badge on her keychain while her mint green nails run across a magazine photo of the 2002 Documenta exhibition in Kassel.

She pushed the magazine to Moriyama, a Japanese student studying abroad. "Do you know how many video installations the curator collected in his last exhibition? The theme of this exhibition is 'The Fifth Lecture Hall'. The organizing committee's mailbox must be filled with proposals for works about war trauma, just like "

Moriyama insisted on his plan - a device emitting bronze rust, countless gears meshing in the curved space, and each groove was engraved with war in different languages.

When he spoke, he always seemed to be measuring the weight of each syllable with the tip of his tongue. The plan in his hand was attached to thirty-four sticky notes, with words such as "collective memory" and "mechanical reproduction" written on them in red and blue markers.

"If we use the fragments of the Manhattan subway turnstiles to make an installation," White joined the discussion. He wore a camel-colored coat, revealing the starched Oxford shirt underneath. His proposal was like a bound volume of old newspapers: "This is called memory archaeology!" The front page of September 2001, 9 trembled in his hands, "--When the audience stares at it, imagination will arise."

Another student, Ivan, also insisted on his own plan.

Dadaism, the blurred portraits of Marlene Dumas, the metaphor of thermal paper, the radioactive dust in VR glasses. Everyone has their own opinions, and the arguments are getting louder and louder...

"Quiet!" Celia pounded on the table, barely stopping the argument. She suggested calming down.

"Didn't you hear that Jiang Zhe is going to participate in the exhibition?" She changed the subject: "The price of his works is the highest among all the students in school."

Moriyama wiped his glasses: "It's priced higher than most teachers' works." He recalled the scene he saw at the gallery event last week: three curators surrounded Jiang Zhe and had a cordial conversation, but he was unable to join them.

“It’s just the last gasp of the academic school,” White said. “You know what’s popular at Frieze Art Fair right now? It’s new forms of expression and contemporary culture.”

Celia said: “Capital needs exotic labels, like… African mask decorations, like primitivism.”

“But I heard that the Documenta jury favored conceptual art,” White said. “Look at the winners in 2002.
He opened his laptop and found a folder called "Document Exhibition Plan".

"The organizing committee is looking for works that integrate geopolitics and technological ethics." She turned her computer to the crowd, and the 2002 award-winning work was on the screen.

The pictures are played in a loop.

Moriyama suddenly pretended to sprinkle something with his hands: "Maybe we should create something so that the audience can reach out and touch it."

Ivan continued: "Don't mention the scars anymore..."

The workshop door was suddenly pushed open, and a girl walked in. "Friends, I heard some news."

Everyone looked at the girl.

"Jamie, you're late."

The girl argued: "Didn't you notice the paint Jiang Zhe bought at the material store recently?"

The crowd shook their heads.

The girl said, "I heard that he plans to continue creating figurative and realistic works. And, maybe he will try to use new materials?"

The focus of the discussion immediately shifted.

"Jiang Zhe's realistic skills? It's just muscle memory from training." "I heard that he paints for 8 hours a day..."

"This is an exaggeration."

“I went to see his works at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Like sculptures from 100 or 200 years ago.”

"This kind of craftsmanship is outdated."

“They are just puppets of art history.” Ivan said, “Do you know Marlene Dumas’ solo exhibition at the Met this year? “She deconstructed colonial history with blurred portraits, while Jiang Zhe is still writing a biography of the Renaissance with a pencil.”

Moriyama recalled something: "Not long ago, I saw Jiang Zhe standing in front of the architecture bookshelf and borrowing a book on artistic metal crafts."

Celia pulled out a crumpled copy of The New Yorker from her handbag. A certain paragraph in the art column was repeatedly highlighted with a highlighter: "This international student gave pencil shavings the texture of oxidized bronze."

"I think we can find out about his choice."

Jamie stared at the sculpture turntable and said, "Maybe we should make a piece that will decay over time."

“A friend told me,” White said, “Jiang Zhe borrowed the Kassel Documenta Yearbook! We should take a look at it too.”

Ivan shook his head: "Maybe he is more suitable to study restoration and archaeology?" He also imitated the actions of the auctioneer.

Amidst everyone's laughter, Moriyama noticed that Celia was photocopying the inside pages of "American Art" magazine.

From the camera, one of Jiang Zhe's works can be vaguely seen.

“Look at these reviews,” Celia said, “several art critics who are known for their radical views do not think that Jiang Zhe’s work is conservative.”

The workshop suddenly fell silent.

Celia began to use a slide projector to show posters of the Kassel Documenta over the years.

Everyone looked at it for a while and then quietly began to modify their own plans.

Ivan instead sprayed acrylic paint onto the canvas to create a haze of neon pink.

The next day.

Professor Kerry went to the library to borrow books.

I found that some of the books I recommended to Jiang Zhe had been borrowed.

I don’t know whether Jiang Zhe has read those books.

When the morning light pierced the mist over the Hudson River, Jiang Zhe was already busy in his studio.

He didn't know that speculation about him was spreading in the school.

After completing a series of preparatory work such as estimating and preparing paint, he used a squirrel-hair watercolor pen, dipped it in the prepared blue, and began to paint on the paper.

There is a complete draft on the mounted Ashley watercolor paper - the Manhattan skyline sealed with white glue last night, which comes in handy at this moment.

The moment the pen tip touches the paper, the ultramarine pigment rushes along the grooves of the paper fibers.

Jiang Zhe shook his wrist slightly, allowing the flat-tipped brush made of squirrel hair to push the paint into gradient layers.

As the patina of the Statue of Liberty spread across the paper, he suddenly tilted the pen at a 45-degree angle and used the side of the pen to draw two cracks.
"Not enough." He muttered as he grabbed the sponge and sucked away the over-spreading purple cloud in the direction of Queens. Soon, the effect formed at the edge of the water mark made him feel satisfied.

Next, spray sea salt on the drawing paper to try special effects——

When the second coat of Naples yellow and the eternal rose red collide on the picture, the ambiguous boundary between morning mist and neon finally solidifies into gel.

After observing the effect, he took out a plastic scraper while the color was half dry, and scraped off a piece of black, revealing the underlying paint and irregular blank spaces - there was a glass window of a factory building.

Next, use a liner pen to dip into diluted gray and draw some characters in the background in a small space.

When applying paint to the last figure, Jiang Zhe suddenly tilted the entire canvas. The accumulated water rushed along the streets of the Lower East Side, diluting the ochre color of the homeless tents and gathering into a strange rainbow on the glass curtain wall of the stock exchange.

He chuckled at the unexpected effect and used absorbent paper to press out the texture on the Wall Street Bull.

While waiting for the surface to dry, Jiang Zhe stepped back a few steps.

From this distance, you can see the entire 1.2-meter painting in its entirety - New York in the picture.

The city in this painting looks real, but its layout is very different from that in reality.

In the dock area, there are silhouettes of migrant workers on the crest of the waves. The curly beard of the dishwasher is drawn with a dry brush, the reflection of the worker's hard hat is made of cold white, and the dust on the construction site is also made with special effects.

His eyes turned to the warm-toned area of ​​the Upper West Side, where three elegantly dressed people were chatting in front of a brownstone building outlined in ochre and raw brown. The Prada suit of the woman on the left was rendered with wet painting; the clothes of the man in the middle were rendered with dry painting; and the effect of the person on the far right was achieved with several layers of color.

The Central Park in the picture is like a green heart. The treetops that Jiang Zhe popped out with a paintbrush and patted with a sponge are stretching in the morning mist. The quick-drying clothes of the joggers have a translucent effect; and the texture of the saxophone of the musicians under the shade of the trees needs a sense of layering.

When depicting the Times Square area, more cow bile was mixed with gum arabic to create the effect on the electronic screen. The celebrity on the billboard is still questionable.

Those faces submerged in light pollution, every detail hides a micro-narrative.

Jiang Zhe's sight stopped at a dark alley in Chelsea. There were white marks brightened by a scraper, which originally represented the reflection of the garbage bag, but now it became blurred.

He walked quickly closer to take a closer look and discovered that the paint on the bottom layer, which had not yet dried, and the paint on the surface had formed an unexpected change.

"This unexpected change is not good," he grabbed the spray bottle and wet part of the painting, and used his fingernails to scratch out fine cracks as the water rippled. When the clear water flowed along these artificial gullies, the effect changed.

When he picked up the brush again, Jiang Zhe changed to a Shanma brush.

This hard-bristle brush can draw sharp lines.

As the midday sun moves across the skylight, the painting begins its final drying phase.

Jiang Zhe watched the different elements interact wonderfully as the water evaporated.

The colors of store signs, the rust red of subway vents, the pure white facades of Soho galleries, the steam of Brooklyn, etc.
He discovered a surprising surprise in the corner of the painting - a drop of paint that had run away and formed a microscopic reflection of the Statue of Liberty's torch when it dried.

When the afternoon light began to change the brightness of the studio, Jiang Zhe started to mix the paints again.

This time he used a medium instead of water to give the newly applied colors a special texture.

Near the Manhattan Bridge, he painted several figures: pedestrians walking hurriedly, performing artists, and himself sketching.

As the last stroke was made, Jiang Zhe tapped the edge of the drawing board with the brush, and the vibration caused tiny ripples in the wet paint.

At this moment, the entire city of New York in the painting seems to become more real.

After Jiang Zhe waited for the picture to dry completely, he took a photo and saved it on the computer.

There are already three pictures in a folder on the computer. (End of this chapter)