Bobbing: The Dreamed World of Shen Tao

By Gu Zhenqing

The figures in Shen Tao's paintings are always isolated in boundlessly dreamland, sinking and rising in water, or standing alone up in the air. In his recent works, hazy water spray, fireworks, landscape with dense mist, rosy clouds as well as small figures between the landscape are often emerged. The scene around the figures are always as unreal as indistinct mirage. Shen Tao seems to be a master of creating "ambient". Beyond a kind of personal emotion that he created, it is more like some sort of lofty context of traditional Chinese scholars. The images created by Shen Tao contain indistinct narrativity and metaphorization. The artist saw through Zen Buddhist logic "Saw mountain as mountain, and water as water", and continually elevated his ego state. In his painting, Shen is seeking the meaning of self-existence, and trying to style and create the social and psychological order of his life. Shen Tao is bobbing up and down in the lake of self-consciousness, and the unbearable weights of life comes from the aesthetical transmission of traditional literati and the pressure caused by the transmission.

Needless to say that from 1990, Chinese contemporary painting field has sprung up a number of images as "swimmers". The weightlessness and floatation of the swimmer reveals the collective experience of some artists who have been facing faithlessness in reality. But the works of Shen show physical reality among individual experience. The figures in his painting surrounded by fantastical environment seem to be quite involuntary and oblivious. After Chinese society accessed the transformation period, the construction of the mass consumption society and the tremendous material enrichment make materialism become all-pervasive. Each individual when facing the external pressure and temptation all alone, always shows weakness and confusion, so does Shen Tao. Therefore his paintings are more like an approach to his personality growth and realization to his psychological impulsion, imbalance and unexpectedness. For the intents of self-exploration, Shen discussed the cause of self-existence and spirit growth, and then followed the searching for the origin of self-reference and the pursuing for the rationality of psychic reality.

The paintings of Shen Tao avoid the spectacle of modern society, but manifest natural landscape and scenery from his own fantasy. His experience and imaginary with natural landscape are visually objectificated in order to obscure the boundary between reality and imagination, upon that an extraordinary expression is formed. His mixed romance with all kinds of natural scenery. From the water spray, the ripple to the misty cloud, Shen uses delicate and skilled stroke to express the sense of flowing and haziness. The scene in the background looks like classic art, but with completely different atmosphere. In his painting, time has been paused and eternalized and physical reality has been softened into poetic elements. In front of a waterfall, in the middle of a lake, or on a piece of flying stone, one skinny nude is facing all the scenery. This character seems to be the artist himself, or can be substitute of any individual. This figure with unrecognized face could be artist"s own role playing and can also be a personified object for any viewer as self-projection. Obviously, Shen Tao opens the scenery in front of the figure as well as the audience and tries to avoid the secular Chinese society. This kind of pure natural, pure classic landscape opens a window in our moral life, and guide the our vision and value. It seems to be our daily experience which Shen is recognizing and reorganizing. But in his works, he is making every effort to reveal the physical and cultural reality which he can not explain or thoroughly comprehend.

No matter the figure in the painting is floating or sinking over the water, or standing awhile in a life tide, the artist is holding form and content to become integrated rationally. Despite of instinctive sensibility, Shen aims the cultural origin of Chinese art spirit; transforms his art into an paradigm of cultural perception; ruminates individual experience and searching for an open consequence. Shen Tao continually makes attempts to express the private experience of self- disenchantment, disabusing and healing but avoid to propagate his personal opinion. This spiritual self-practice can not be previewed and the result is not predictable. This variable process of self-exploration is permeated by Shen's insight and volition to leap through the complex representation of contemporary art, and suggests certain significance of cultural construction which beyond personal experience.

The paintings of Shen Tao avoid the spectacle of modern society, but manifest natural landscape and scenery from his own fantasy. His experience and imaginary with natural landscape are visually objectificated in order to obscure the boundary between reality and imagination, upon that an extraordinary expression is formed. His mixed romance with all kinds of natural scenery. From the water spray, the ripple to the misty cloud, Shen uses delicate and skilled stroke to express the sense of flowing and haziness. The scene in the background looks like classic art, but with completely different atmosphere. In his painting, time has been paused and eternalized and physical reality has been softened into poetic elements. In front of a waterfall, in the middle of a lake, or on a piece of flying stone, one skinny nude is facing all the scenery. This character seems to be the artist himself, or can be substitute of any individual. This figure with unrecognized face could be artist"s own role playing and can also be a personified object for any viewer as self-projection. Obviously, Shen Tao opens the scenery in front of the figure as well as the audience and tries to avoid the secular Chinese society. This kind of pure natural, pure classic landscape opens a window in our moral life, and guide the our vision and value. It seems to be our daily experience which Shen is recognizing and reorganizing. But in his works, he is making every effort to reveal the physical and cultural reality which he can not explain or thoroughly comprehend.

No matter the figure in the painting is floating or sinking over the water, or standing awhile in a life tide, the artist is holding form and content to become integrated rationally. Despite of instinctive sensibility, Shen aims the cultural origin of Chinese art spirit; transforms his art into an paradigm of cultural perception; ruminates individual experience and searching for an open consequence. Shen Tao continually makes attempts to express the private experience of self- disenchantment, disabusing and healing but avoid to propagate his personal opinion. This spiritual self-practice can not be previewed and the result is not predictable. This variable process of self-exploration is permeated by Shen's insight and volition to leap through the complex representation of contemporary art, and suggests certain significance of cultural
construction which beyond personal experience.