Distortion and Small
-about NaShunbatu’s Paintings
By Wang Min an
NaShunbatu draws a unique natural appearance. Why is it unique? This is because the natural structure of the whole picture (we can say it landscape structure) is not natural, i.e., the nature is not the interception of the reality natural landscape, on the contrary, the nature likes in a extrusion process, which is like a few fragments of nature in mutual strike, friction, and jostle against one another. Indeed, we cannot put these works in realistic painting; the images will not view as a natural scenery and perfect overall. Or we can even say that it pulls geographies and environments of different spaces together. Namely, it cut the rivers from A, the caves from B, the clouds from C, as well as the forests, grassland, and houses from other places of their own surroundings; or peel them off the whole places originally, then make a force assemble in a frame at this very moment. The assembling constitutes the superposition. Sometimes these superposition of the natural fragments are meticulous and abnormal strictly abide by their respective areas, and there is a distinct demarcation line between them; there has no correlation between them, which is totally alien to the two scenes and each of them is closed up. Sometimes they are also reciprocal chiasm and overlapping with each other, and infiltrating and extending into the area of each other; it seems there is a corridor as a moderate region, and it seems existing something faintly discernible link between them. Sometimes they are frolicking, hovering, mutual communication with each other, as if in a conversation, response, or in confrontation, comparison, or competitive in the background. At this point, this picture is not like the landscape what people usually see, that they do not constitute a overall vision, rather than taking a full-lens of a natural realism, instead, they are mandatory collage fragments: the collage of incline and positive, undulating and flat, rough and calm, oscillating and still, serried and hollow. Sometimes, the overlap between these two adjacent areas are very steep, therefore, there exists a fracture of the gap which is abrupt, vertical, recklessly, and unreasonable. Sometimes, the overlap is moderate and gentle, but because of the good-neighborly relations of different version, it retains a mild distortion-regardless which kind of form the overlap to be taken, the fragments of the painting are not coordinated: there always be a boundary quite distinct from each other, that it cuts the frame into several fields with bending or straight cutting. It is these different fields, we would like to say, it is these different natural fragments keep each other in a state of unnatural, awkward and surreal condition, which is also a distortion, the deformation and fracture the status of correction. To some extent, this is like seismic moment, a sleek natural suddenly get incredible burst and extrusion. It seems that the strength of the earth's interior roaring in a sudden.
These single segments are the state of nature themselves. They are presented to the sky, grassland, rivers, mountains, deserts, trees, etc., they and other fragments are mandatory overlapping, but in the stack, they are autonomy and internal unity. On the frame, the internal fragments also constitute separate color pieces: the side hill constitutes a piece, the lake surface constitutes a piece, the forest constitutes a piece, and the sky also constitutes a piece. It is a collage of natural and scenic pieces, and is also a collage of colors. In other words, the collages of color and nature are mutually in the reinforcement. Sometimes, NaShunbatu even weaken the scenery and the composition themselves in order to highlight the color pieces, thus there appears some composition and “nature” which are not so clear, accordingly, only the color piece itself is perspicuity and integrity. The performance of the screen even registers as the entanglement of piles of color pieces, but confusing the reproduction of landscape and scenery. In this connection, these paintings are either the collage of the nature itself, or the collage of color pieces, or the collage of the formalism; at the same time, they are either the competition of natural fragments, or the competition of color. In the former case, it is the competition of dynamic and static, frenzied and rational, rudeness and sedate; in the latter case, it is the competition of bright and dark, black and white, bulk and block, broad-brush and fine lines.
What do people see from the picture besides the nature and the color pieces incidental it? There is no doubt that people will see the tiny figures in it. But why those strange tiny figures exist in the picture? In fact, there exists a long tradition of the landscape. In the classical landscape with characters, people are the main body of the picture while landscape as a foil, so that people will stand out in the landscape. In the classical landscape, people, scenery and nature all as themselves are keeping a harmonious relationship respectively. As the main body of the picture, people is the center of the perceptivity, so that the scenery carrying out in a multi-level gradually surrounding the people. But NaShunbatu’s paintings are just the reverse of it. In his paintings, people is no longer register as a subject, nor to be the center of the picture standing out from the natural scenery’s background, nor to be surrounded, drove up or foiled by natural scenery, it is no longer full of glow. Now, people are so tiny, trivial, insignificant that it quits into a hidden corner of the nature and appears with a complete stranger image in the picture-accurately, it is a complete strange symbol.
Why people back into a remote corner? Why will they almost be swallowed up by natural scenery? And why is there no coordinated relationship between the people and natural scenery absolutely? Obviously, NaShunbatu has the people extricated from the main status of classical landscape paintings. What does the people’s appearance mean if they are not surrounded by natural scenery? Of course, the public can see that people’s appearance will must reveal its tiny and lonely in front of vastness, it will must express desolation and despair of some existential type, and it will must be a survival absurdity and helpless. These are all true, but in my opinion, it is better to say that I see a “scenery” in scenery, see a “nature” in nature, and see another “nature” which is quite different from nature, than we see a modernism predicament in platitudes of an old scholar. In these "landscapes", I even see how people appeared as fine scenery. These people become a “landscape” in the natural scenery, such as a tree is the landscape in hungriness, a woman is the landscape in a large group of men, a flock of sheep is the landscape in grassland, a flower is the landscape in a desert. A person’s symbol is the symbol of the landscape. People’s enthusiasm, inherence and depth are hidden deeply (because his tiny). He only left the posture, the shape of body, the image and the symbol. This symbol is perverse and strange: sometimes it jumping, squatting, laying, hand standing, bent, climbing, or sometimes it standing still. They are showing in the formalism attitude, on one hand it uncovers the psychology depth, on the other hand it strip off sociality coat. It is a tiny but naked symbol. It does not mean that it immerse in the natural embrace (exactly, they are not close to the nature), nor mean the violent development to the nature. They neither take a completely playing with the nature. Do they exist here just for response to the proposition of the existence? Don’t they exist as a heterogeneous of the picture, as a symbol heterogeneity? They are so tiny, but they immediately attract the public’s vision, don’t they? Why an insignificant symbol can attract our vision? Isn’t because it is a heterogeneous screen in the picture? When the painting are surrounded by the mountain, water, sky, and wasteland, all public’s attention are occupied by them. At this time, a different symbol which is a humanoid symbol will stimulate our interest unexpectedly. People are symbolic, I even want to say that people are materialized-not the materialization in the significant of materialize, but in the significant of image.
The attracting mechanism of his picture is completely different from the characters in the classical landscape. To the latter, the screen character is the bold center, at the same time, it becomes the object of attention due to the depth in themselves, such as eyes, faces, expression, and obvious social identity. That is to say, people have become the focus all come from the fact of people itself. However, in NaShunbatu’s works, as a strange "landscape", people are highly abstracted as a "symbol" which is an unnatural "nature" and special scenery. In fact, there is just no focus in NaShunbatu’s pictures, just because they are in folding, collage, and assembling, so that no fragment becomes the dominant center of another fragment, no scenery, nature or color piece becomes other scenery, collage or color piece. There is no caste system in the frame. In this non-hierarchy screen, it shows a most insignificant person in an obscure corner suddenly. The tiny character suddenly becomes the center of our attention only because it is not nature or scenery, or rather, because it is another symbol-the symbol of people, rather than its identity or depth. We paid attention to the tiny character time and again, didn’t we? It doesn’t mean that the character is the focus of picture, but if the public don’t have means from the violent or vast natural scenery, then please pay attention to the tiny and insignificant character. It is the characters’ tiny and heterogeneity make the pictures’ violent and vast perfect.