The Tree Of Question

                                                                                                                                                                        GU ZHENQING

   Issue trees, also known as logic trees, refer to a method in art that dissects a question (root) into its detailed components (branches) in order to provide potential solutions or to clarify the interrelation. Similarly, Xiao Yong’s paintings is usually concerned with the problem solving in art, such as the questions of individual versus group, construction versus deconstruction, signifier versus signified, and appearance versus essence—the questions that are ever-changing according to place, time, and condition. The artist continuously uses artistic practices to raise these questions, to recall, reaffirm, and challenge the audience’s existing visual experience. Since the end of 2009, Xiao has been painstakingly proposing and answering visual issues. In his works, he intentionally dissolved the complete appearance of objects, showing a mottled, hazy picture. Things are represented by colored pixels, as they were corroded or exfoliated. The issue tree Xiao drew enables him to further investigate the issue and demonstrate a clear, in-depth, and theoretical approach in his works. Thus, the relation between the viewer and the artwork, between viewer’s usual cognitive experience and abnormal visual impact, between the fast easy way of perception and the sense of emptiness, alienation, and anxiety the viewer feel in consequence, and last but not least, the relation between therapeutic  aesthetic and the bizarre and strange modern life syndromes.

   He ponders through his paintings: What kind of cognitive standards decide the value of things/artworks? Why do the viewers’ standards vary so drastically? Why are the audience’s responses so different? Xiao expressed a profound self-reflection and speculation of uncertainty. He believes that our cognition will be put at risk when we are all deeply convinced of one single “truth”. Hence, he keeps using deconstruction of image as a means to break people’s viewing habits and aesthetic stereotypes. Meanwhile, he devotes himself to cultivating the soil for his self-dependent innovation, growing more and deeper roots of issue trees with his distinguishing characters.